The Grey Lord: The Crazy Years
by nobodez
Summary: Third in the Grey Lord series. Continues after the events of the Independence Lich. Covers the one hundred fifty years between the end of the Acrid invasion and the introduction of the Children of the Solar System to the Citadel Council. HP X ID4 X ME. INCOMPLETE.
1. Hannah I

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Hannah I**

_December 31, 2000_

_Times Square, New York_

Hannah wore one of her better dresses, one that was conservative by still showed what little curves she had at nearly fourteen. While her mother didn't really care, one of the many concubine of the Emperor of Mars, and the mother of the Princess Imperial, made Yolanda very open minded, Hannah cared about the image she portrayed to the world, or at least, the mundane TV-watching audiences of Earth. The Martians loved her for who she was, and since most of them weren't human, they really didn't have much concept of human social norms. To a kzin'shassa her knee-length dress, tights, low-heels, and wool peacoat were stifling, but then, if she was covered in fur she'd think human clothes were stifling too. The murgars didn't even wear clothes, since they didn't have any external sexual organs to cover. The acrids had mostly settled on wearing skirts, or kilts depending on the adopted gender of the acrid; though since most of the survivors were former slaves, it would likely be a generation or more before they could offer any constructive fashion opinions.

Today, though, Hannah was in Times Square, a pale shadow of its former glory just three and a half years after the destruction of Manhattan during the Independence War, appearing with her father and his current concubine, her aunt and uncle, and her cousins, including the nearly two-year old James. Luckily her father had decided that, as his heir, only Hannah would be joining the interview, and she wouldn't have to contend with her hundreds of siblings (mostly half, though she had three younger full siblings, luckily none of them at Hogwarts just yet).

That reminded her of the most difficult part of the interview, her schooling. It was halfway through her third year at Hogwarts, and the identity of her school was bound to come up. It had become a minor mystery when her father had declared himself Emperor of Mars and the existence of his horde of children become known. She'd been ten then, and so was still able to be in the public eye, though that changed when she was sent off the Hogwarts. So, her cover, and the cover of all her half-siblings, was that she attended an exclusive public school in Scotland, though she knew enough to call it a private school here in America. The only element of scholastic pride she'd been allowed was the silver and green scarf she wore in the crisp winter chill, and even that she'd have to sacrifice once the cameras were rolling.

"So, ready for the interview?" asked her father. Aside from the enamel flag pin on the lapel of his suit jacket, he looked just like any other politician.

Hannah shrugged, "I guess so, I mean, there's going to be a lot of us, and I doubt they're going to care much about me."

"Won't care?" asked her father. He gently grabbed her shoulders and held her at arms length, "You're my heir, the future Empress of the newest and grandest Empire known to Man. One day billions of Martians will look to you as their leader, their guiding light, their supreme example. The people of an entire world will follow your example. Yes, right now you're just a Slytherin, but eventually, you'll be the most famous witch in history."

"Really?" asked Hannah. "Though, I wouldn't call me 'just' a Slytherin. Although most of the older students don't understand, thanks to you, two-thirds of the youngest three years, and thus half of the students in total, look to me as their older sister. I just hope that one day you won't regret naming me your heir."

"Hannah, I'll never regret you, just as I'll never regret your brothers and sisters," said her father, and she knew he meant it. "I love you, and know that, once I step down, you'll be a great Empress. I also know that many of the movers and shakers here on Earth are interested in you, what your opinions are, and what you know. While right now you're just a thirteen year old girl, eventually you'll be the most powerful woman in history, reigning over an entire world. They know this, and so what you say, what you do, and what you believe, matters."

Hannah swallowed, a sudden pocket of dread and anxiety settling into the pit of her stomach. She wasn't sure if she was ready for that sort of fame, and wasn't sure if she'd ever be ready for it.

"But, that's for the future," her father hastily said to cheer her up. "Today you can just let me do most of the talking, and if you get uncomfortable, just say so, and we'll move on to something else. Okay?"

Hannah nodded, and gave a shy smile in response, "Okay dad."

"That's my girl," said her father with pride.

The next half hour was a bit of a blur, as Hannah was taken with her aunt Winnie, cousin Arty, and her father's current Concubine Melissa, to get their makeup done. Hannah hadn't ever been one of makeup, her mother's Jamaican heritage combined with her father's movie-star good looks gave her a natural beauty, at least in her opinion. The makeup artist complemented her on her looks, but then added what felt like a kilo of makeup that in the end didn't seem to make much of a difference. Her cousin and aunt were much the same, not looking that much different from before, though Melissa looked better, though the vain woman who was barely a decade older than she was had spent the last week on a transport from Mars, so she had actually needed the makeup.

Finally the extended Black-Shepard family was brought into the Studio, which had a large window that overlooked the thin crowd in the famous square below. It was early afternoon, so there was still a good eight hours before it would be packed with the New Year's Even crowd, the first official celebration in New York since the Independence War. The festivities had tried to make a go of it in Boston, but it just wasn't the same, or so Hannah and been told. Having grown up in London she really hadn't watched any of the American New Year's Even festivities, and so she only knew about it through her father's and mother's recollections. She'd be here for this one, though, before they flew back to Scotland for the start of the spring term next week.

The studio was arrayed in a familial setting, with a long couch, two love seats, and a single armchair around a low table, all surrounded with bright lights and a half dozen of the large video cameras. Her aunt and uncle were placed in one of the love seats, her cousin James held in uncle Siri's lap, while she'd share the sofa with the twins. Her father and Melissa would occupy the other love seat, and the interviewer, Diane Sawyer, was going to sit in the armchair. She was doing another segment right now, so the chair was empty.

"This is so wicked," said Apollo, flopping down into the middle of the sofa. He then turned around to look over the back and watch the milling people down below.

"I'm not sure why we're here," said Artemis, sitting down which much more grace than her younger brother. "I mean, sure, mum and dad are famous, and uncle Jimmy is too, and even Hannah's a bit famous, but why us?"

"You're here because they wanted to see out family," said Winona. Unlike Hannah or Artemis, she preferred to wear slacks, and was keeping her toddler on her knee, where he'd be kept out of the way.

"Then why aren't Joseph, or Jeanne, or Willie, or any of Hannah's brothers and sisters here?" asked Apollo, turning back around. "I mean, if it's about family, we're just a small part of it."

"They may be your uncle's children, but only Hannah here in his heir," said Sirius.

"What isn't Willie his heir? I mean, I'm not your heir, and I'm older than Appa here," said Artemis, gesturing to her younger twin.

"Because, unlike your father's house, the Imperial House of Shepard has linear primogeniture, rather than the agnatic primogeniture of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Take pride that you are a cognate of the Imperial House of Shepard," said Winona.

Artemis sighed, "Yeah, but I'm like the thousandth in line."

"Artemis, as if this morning you're the nine-hundred-thirty-second in line to inherit the Imperial throne of Mars, behind your mother, of course," chimed in Hannah's father, who was escorting Melissa to their love seat.

Melissa rubbed her stomach as she sat down, "Though that'll change soon enough."

"You're pregnant?" asked Winona excitedly.

Hannah just sighed, another half-sibling. It wasn't like her father hid his plans for having as many children as possible. Sure, he'd begun it to reinvigorate the magical population of Britain, but now that he was Emperor, he saw it as his duty to make sure humans were a significant minority within the Empire, though his liberal immigration laws had already seen a few hundred thousand immigrants just in the three years since Mars had been settled.

"We just confirmed it this morning," said Melissa.

Just then the lights flashed, and the production assistants came over to make sure that they were all in their places. After a quick glare from their mother, the twins sat properly on the sofa. Hannah, who'd already been ready, received a smile from her father.

"Okay, we're going to have a teaser first, and then we'll have the interview," said an anonymous producer in a bulky headset. Just then Diane Sawyer, wearing a conservative dark blue skirt suit came over and look her seat. The producer backed out of sight of the cameras and began a slow countdown with his fingers. When he reached one he pointed to the older new anchor.

"Coming up on ABC Two-Thousand One, we interview the Emperor of Mars and the CEO of Cerberus Inc., the saviors of Earth, and their family, now three and a half years after the devastation of the Independence War. We talk about the past, what they're doing now, and what the most influential siblings in the Solar System have planned for the future. Right after these words from our sponsors," said Diane looking into one of the cameras. The light had turned off during the middle of her short teaser and had switched first to the camera pointing at Hannah's father, then her Aunt and Uncle, and then to a wide shot of all eight of them, before returning to the anchor before turning off.

"And we're out, good job Diane," said the producer.

"Thanks," she said, adjusting her jacket. She then turned her attention to her guests, "Just like we talked about, it's going to be a two-part interview, each segment about seven minutes long. The first segment is going to focus on just Emperor James and Mrs. Black. A bit of history, then a bit focusing on your participation during the War. Then we go to break, and afterwards it'll be the family, introductions, how's life with the fame, and then back to the Emperor and Mrs. Black about your plans for the future."

Hannah's father and Aunt Winnie both nodded.

"Fifteen seconds," said the producer.

"Good, I'll do a bit on intro and then we'll start with you, Emperor," said Ms. Sawyer. Before anyone could speak up the producer once again began his countdown. "Welcome back, I'm Diane Sawyer, and this is ABC Two-Thousand One. With me today are two of the most famous people of the last four years, Emperor James of Mars and Winona Black, CEO of Cerberus Incorporated, and both heroes of the Independence War, who along with our later guest, then-Captain, now-Colonel Steven Hiller of the United States Marine Corps, piloted the famous Normandy up to the Acrid Mothership and forced the surrender and dissolution of the Acrid Empire. Then, in an action that's been hailed as equal parts generosity and greed, freed the enslaved kzin'shassas, murgars, and even acrids and set up the Empire of Mars."

She turned to Hannah's father, "So, Emperor James, tell me how an Iowa-born, and Colorado-raised, man goes to Britain to found one of the most innovative companies of the last twenty years, and then saves the lives of millions during the opening salvo of the Independence War before turning a mission to destroy the Acrid Mothership into the founding of the largest and most powerful Empire in human history?"

"Well, it was a matter of seised opportunities," said Hannah's father. "I mean, I lucked into my wealth after moving to the United Kingdom in Eighty-One, a matter of currency trading turning a few quid into a bit billion in a matter of months. Then, I discovered an injustice, my future brother-in-law falsely imprisoned. After getting his free, and introducing him to my sister, I took my fortune into investments."

"Some claim that your investment, and eventual takeover, of Morton-Thiokol saved the lives of astronauts when you revealed the sub-standard O-rings in the Space Shuttle SRBs," offered Ms. Sawyer.

"I've always had a love for space, and I saw the acquisition of Morton-Thiokol on Eighty-Four as an opportunity to have some small part in this great country's space program. Yes, my review of the engineering documents did reveal a potential danger in the SRB O-rings, and the dramatic test of a compromised O-ring demonstrated the danger, but it was the administrators at NASA who agreed with my conclusions that are the real heroes of that episode. That no accidents occurred is merely a demonstration of the continued standards of excellence at NASA," explained the Emperor.

"And what about the events of the Independence War?," offered Diane. "Thousands of Cerberus mercenaries helped evacuate Manhattan and the rest of the greater New York City area, saving millions during the opening salvo of the Independence War. Your advice for the governments of both the US and the UK saw millions more saved in London, Washington, and LA."

"New York, LA, and DC I'll take credit for, though only so far as I offered my consultation to the Governor and Mayor here, and President Whitmore," answered Hannah's father, using his usual tactics of transferring praise to others, and in the process make himself seem more humble. "I only wish that I could have done more to save lives around the world."

"And London?" asked Diane, though she already knew the answer.

"That was all Winona's doing," offered the Emperor.

The active camera switched to the one on Hannah's aunt and uncle, as the veteran anchor continued her interview, "That brings us to you, Winona Black, younger sister of the self-proclaimed Emperor of Mars, and now CEO of Cerberus Incorporated. You brother claims that it was you that saved millions in London, including the Queen and most of the Royal Family. How do you respond to that?"

"Like Jimmy, I used the connections I'd accumulated to gain the ear of the people in power, and luckily enough they took my advice, and began the evacuations. Unfortunately, we were unable to save so much of my adopted home's cultural heritage. While the rebuilding London is growing into a beautiful city, I wish I could have done more to save it, as well as the other great cities of Europe," opined Winona. "We were in the city that evening, when the ships came in, shopping for the coming school year. It was the twins' first year at their public school, what Americans would call a private school, and we were making a day of it. Sirius saved our family, while I did what I could for the city and the country."

"Once again, it seems that the famous Shepard modesty is in full force," commented Ms. Sawyer. "Once last question before we go to break. What was it like on the Mothership?"

Winona took a sharp intake a breath. Hannah knew that her father and aunt, and their friend Colonel Hiller, didn't like to talk about what happened on the Mothership.

"If I didn't already know that it was them or us, and that we were mainly targeting the forces of the Acrid Empire, it would have been more difficult than it was. It was the three of us against millions of troops, and it was only the surprise and Colonel Hiller's expertise that allowed us to carry the day," said Winona. "I'm not sure if I'd be able to do it again, if I was back then and there. Perhaps I'd have let Jimmy and Steve go up with a few others, make a proper assault out of it, rather than just go with the three of us. It was quite possibly the worst thing I've ever done. Yes, the solider and bureaucrats we killed were the equivalent of alien space Nazis, but even now, three and a half years later, I still have nightmares about it." Just then Sirius wrapped his arm around his wife's shoulder.

"Thank you for that sobering reminder of the horrors of war," said Diane softly. She then turned to face the camera properly, "Stay with us after the break, when we'll talk to the rest of this remarkable family. I'm Diane Sawyer, and this is ABC Two-Thousand One."

"And we're clear," said the producer.

"Sorry about that last question, I didn't realize it was so sensitive," said Ms. Sawyer.

"It's alright, you wouldn't know," said Winona. "Let's just focus on the present, and perhaps the future."

"Of course," said Diane. She then looked to the three teenagers on the sofa, "Now, I plan to ask each of you an easy question, just to introduce you to the viewers. You don't have to answer with a long story, but a few words or sentences will suffice."

"Okay," said Hannah, her affirmation quickly echoed by her cousins.

"Lord Black, we'll be touching on your relationship as well, and Ms. Simpson, obviously your relationship to the Emperor is very interesting to our viewers."

"Ten seconds," said the producer before anyone could respond.

"Welcome back, I'm Diane Sawyer, and this is ABC Two-Thousand One. With me this afternoon is Emperor James of Mars, his concubine Ms. Melissa Simpson, late of Cardiff, Princess Imperial Hannah Shepard, her cousins Artemis and Apollo Black, CEO of Cerberus Incorporated, Winona Black, and her husband, Lord Sirius Black, as well as their twenty-month old son, James Black."

"Now, Lord Black, we heard earlier how your brother-in-law got you exonerated and released from a maximum security prison, what can you tell me about the crime you were accused of?"

"Thank you Diane, well, I'm not proud to admit it, but I was thrown into prison for betraying my brother in all but name, as well as his wife and their fifteen-month old son, to a terrorist, as well as a terrorist bombing myself. Thirteen counts of murder, two counts of accessory to murder, and attempted murder," explained Sirius.

"Quite the docket," commented Diane. "But you didn't do it."

Sirius shook his head, "Now, I was framed by another man I called brother, he faked his death when I confronted him by setting off a bomb, killing a dozen others. I was distraught, I had lost so much, and it was my idea to trust Peter with James and Lily's location," explained Sirius. It was now his turn to be comforted by his wife. Hannah had heard the story before, but never explained in a mundane-friendly manner. It seemed more tragic this way, without the betrayal to Riddle. "Luckily, Jimmy found evidence that got me free, even got me a real trial, not the farce I'd been thrown into gaol under. After that, he introduced me to my Winnie, and reunited me with my godson, who'd survived the terrorist attack that'd killed his parents."

"Is that why you named you youngest son after him?" asked Diane.

"No, Jamie here isn't named after Jimmy, he's named after James, my godson's father, and my brother in all but name, though we only had Jamie after Winnie and I retired from teaching," said Sirius.

"You were a teacher?" asked Diane.

"Chemistry, Winnie taught Modern History," explained Sirius. "I retired when Apollo and Artemis began there, and Winnie retired shortly after the Empire was founded and she took over control of Cerberus, though she had intended to stay for another year and a half until the twins were old enough to take her class."

"And this is the same school where you attended, and your nieces and nephews attend?" asked Diane.

"Aye, it's a private school up in Scotland," said Sirius.

"Hogwarts," interjected Hannah's father, obviously surprising all of his family members present.

"Oh, it seems that's a bit of a sensitive issue, why is that?" asked Diane, realizing that her guests had just massively deviated from the planned subjects.

Hannah was worried, but not overly so. She knew that he father never did things without a reason, but she wasn't exactly sure what it was.

"It's a school of magic," explained the Emperor matter-of-factly.

"Magic?" asked Diane skeptically.

"You believe in aliens, but not magic?" asked Hannah's father.

"I know aliens exist. I mean, I've met them, I can verify they're real," the interviewer turned interviewee replied.

"But four years ago, if you were told that in six months a massive alien spaceship, a quarter of the size of the Moon, would arrive and kill a third of the population of Earth over a three day period, would you believe me?"

"No," said Diane Sawyer confidently. "I'd have called you a lunatic and then left."

"So why is magic so hard to believe?" asked the Emperor.

"Proof," said Diane.

Hannah gasped along with her uncle and cousins as her father extracted a wand from an interior pocket of his suit jacket. That she had her own wand in an invisible sheath under the hem of her dress wasn't an issue.

"This is a wand, specifically, the Elder Wand. I won it from its former master a decade ago, it's my most powerful wand, but not my only one. I can also perform magic without a wand, but it's less controlled," said Hannah's father. She'd enjoyed the story her father had told her of how he'd 'won' the Elder Wand from Headmaster Dumbledore, by first stealing it and then using it as collateral in a game of poker.

"I'm with you so far," offered Ms. Sawyer. Hannah paid more attention to the surprised members of the production crew than her father's theatrics. She knew that the Department of Magic wouldn't let this obvious breech of the Statue stand without a fight.

"There are many disciplines of magic, but my favorite for impressing the non-magical is transmutation, changing one thing into something else," explained the Emperor. He picked up a cup off the low table, one of many that had been provided for the guests to quench their thirst under the heat of the studio lamps. "This is an ordinary water cup, plastic, weighing an ounce at most." He handed it to Ms. Sawyer, who took it.

"You can confirm it's a water cup?"

"It appears as such," confirmed the former interviewer, having experience with the traditional stage magicians and their slight of hand.

With a wave of the Elder Wand, the cup quickly was transfigured into glass, specifically a pint glass, just like the ones used at the Three Broomsticks for butter beer.

"It's heavier," the anchorwoman exclaimed.

"It's glass now," commented the Emperor. Another wave, and it was transfigured into a fairly realistic porcelain pig.

"The detail is amazing," said Ms. Sawyer. "And I can't find any obvious tricks."

"These aren't tricks, Ms. Sawyer, but real magic," explained Hannah's father. With another wave of his wand the pig was now alive. While Hannah couldn't have done the same sequence of transfigurations, she was familiar with it, as it was a favorite of Professor McGonagall. The cup to the pint glass was a material change, without changing the type of object it was. Then to the porcelain pig was a shape change, though it remained ceramic, and the latest was a fairly standard non-living to living transfiguration. Hannah, having grown up knowing magic, hadn't thought it a significant challenge, but she understood the effects the transfigurations had on the stoic anchorwoman. "Nearly four hundred years ago the magical governments of Earth decided to hide from the mundane majority, only revealing themselves to those that were either in the upper reaches of government, like Presidents and Prime Ministers, or the parents of witches and wizards born into the mundane world. This was called the Statute of Secrecy."

"Was?" asked Diane Sawyer.

"Yes, obviously it's just been destroyed," muttered Hannah.

"But why are you doing this? Obviously if it was kept this long there's some sort of repercussions for breaking it."

"Ah, but remember, I said this was decided by the magical governments of Earth. I represent the government of Mars, and the Empire of Mars is neither a signatory of the Statute of Secrecy, nor a member of the International Confederation of Wizards. I also have diplomatic immunity, as does my daughter, my sister and her husband, and my nieces and nephews. This is the twenty-first century, or near enough here in New York. Aliens live and work here on Earth, being born among the stars, with ancestors native to planets we didn't even know existed four years ago. This is not an age of secrecy, and so, I decided that the biggest secret of the last four hundred years needed to be revealed," explained Hannah's father.

This moment, the opportunity for the Empire of Mars to break the social and political constraints of the governments of Earth, would be something that the future Empress of Mars would remember for the rest of her life.

**Updated:** May 6, 2014


	2. Hermione I

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Hermione I**

_October 9, 2007_

_Skyfall Estate, Scottish Highlands_

Hermione Granger, twenty-eight year old Divisional Vice President of Thaumaturgy for Cerberus, stepped out of the black company car. She could have flooed in, but she was proud of the augmentations she'd made to the company cars, originally based on Rolls-Royce Phantoms, but with thaumaturgical additions. Since they had been added to the Cerberus fleet just three years previous, they didn't have the full range of features she knew she could have added, but then again, the only reason why half of the Cerberus fleet of vehicles were legal was because they were grandfathered into the new Ministry of Magic regulations following the takeover by HM Government in 2001. She understood why her old boss, and then Emperor of Mars, James Shepard had revealed the existence of magic, though she'd likely have done it a bit more diplomatically than on an American New Year's Eve millennial retrospective (as the so-called 'brightest witch of her age', Hermione was glad that the recovery from the Independence War had pushed the millennial celebrations back to the real millennium, rather than a year before, though she could have done without the world-wide devastation caused by the Acrid Empire's attempted invasion of the planet).

"Enough wool gathering," she told herself as the hum of the company car disappeared into the background. She took the few steps forward, and knocked on the door. She nearly covered her surprise as a kzin'shassa suddenly appeared next to her.

"What is you business with Lady Black?" asked the kzin'shassa. 'He asked', Hermione mentally corrected herself. She'd been working with the former slave race for a decade, and had been one of the ones credited with the revelation that their incredible stealth was magical in nature, the first confirmation that magic wasn't exclusive to Earth, but she still had difficulty thinking of them as 'him' and 'her', the differences were fairly subtle, since the kzintal pseudo-mammals didn't have the secondary sexual characteristics of the humanoid and fae sapients of Earth, though their primary sexual characteristics were amazingly similar, if closer in appearance to the felines they resembled than humans, giants, goblins, and other humanoids of Earth.

Hermione shook herself out of her distracted thoughts, "I have an appointment." She made a purposeful gesture with her hand, and cast one of the few wandless and non-verbal spells she had perfected over the years, revealing the time. "I've fifteen minutes before I'm late."

The kzin'shassa grinned, a slightly disconcerting grin that revealed the sharp teeth that the still predominantly carnivorous species was infamous for, "Excellent. The Lady prefers when her guests are early."

"It's a business appointment. She wished that I'd report my findings from the trip to the Continent," explained Hermione. She'd arrived back from Frankfurt the night before, and has visited Algeriers, Krakow, Athens, Oslo, and Vienna during her four month trip, spending Independence Day at the deconstruction site outside the Greek capital. Although the nation had been spared the destruction of one of Europe's oldest cities, the massive City Destroyer had still done major damage when it was defeated. Hermione still paled at the thought that it was estimated that the wrecks would still be around for centuries before being fully deconstructed. Mind, even during the deconstruction the massive war machines were attacking the people that lived and worked around them. That's why she'd been sent on her trip, the effects of phlebotinum exposure.

Just then the door opened, and Hermione smiled.

"Hermione," said the twenty two year old woman with a smile.

"Artemis, how are things?" asked Hermione in reply. Although the young woman's mother had tried, it seemed that Artemis Black wasn't interested in continuing the family business, and instead had begun her work towards being a doctor, though Hermione admitted that the life-saving potential of a witch doctor overcame any possible jokes the Lord Black could tell. It made Hermione smile, and she let out a bit of a chuckle before she was able to rein it in.

"Get it out of your system, I know that whenever I'm around my father he lets me have it," said Artemis with a sigh.

"I'm sorry, I was thinking about my meeting, and then to why you hadn't followed your mother into Cerberus, and then I remembered the gift Sirius got you last year for Christmas," said Hermione with a smirk.

"You know the accepted term is 'magical physician'," replied Artemis with a smirk of her own.

"Thanks for that Arty, I was getting a bit stressed thinking about what you mother had me looking into," replied Hermione.

"Did you figure it out?" asked Artemis, suddenly become serious, though luckily there wasn't any spontaneous human transfiguration, since it would have been odd if she'd become Sirius. "I mean, yeah it's cool that Jamie has such control over his magic, but to think there might be other problems …"

"There shouldn't be any problems Arty, he survived his first year, which means he's already past most of the problems I saw," Hermione said, attempting to reassure her younger friend. "He's already survived this long without any problems, he'll likely have no problems at Hogwarts in a few years."

"Look at me, making you stand out here in the wind," said Artemis as a gust of cool autumn air blew past her and into the house. She stepped back and let Hermioen come in. "I'll let mum know Hermione's here," the younger Lady Black told the kzin'shassa guard. He nodded as Hermione stepped through the threshold, and gently faded away, waiting once more for his presence to be needed.

"Thanks," said Hermione, as the younger witch closed the door. She set down her leather briefcase, which was like all of her bags, significantly larger on the inside, and took over her jacket. Rather than hand it off to the younger witch, or one of the Black elves, Hermione folded it gently, and then slipped it inside of her bag. Like her boss, Hermione preferred slacks to skirts, though she tended to wear reds and golds, a heritage of her seven years a Gryffindor.

"So, did you bring any souvenirs back?" asked Artemis as the two witches walked from the door towards her mother's home office.

"Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. I think October really isn't the best time for such things, what with Christmas upcoming," said Hermione with a smile. She'd picked up some gifts for the Black twins in Greece, since the pair were named after the twin Olympians. It might have been a business trip, but it didn't take time to pick up souvenirs, and it had helped with some of the interviews with the more distraught victims.

Artemis got a gleam in her eye and Hermione began to sigh even before her younger friend asked the question, "So, now that you're back, do you think Harry'll ask the question?"

Hermione paused, forcing Artmemis to stop as well, and turn to face her. "He's not going to ask, at least not again. We're comfortable with where we are, and the only reason he asked the one time was because your father told him that it was expected of him, though why he should care now what's expected of him is beyond me. Yes, Harry and I love each other, no, we're never going to get married. He's a Professor at Hogwarts, teaching the bright young minds, and mostly your cousins these days, how to defend themselves and others, both from magic and the mundane, is what he loves. I'm the Divisional Vice President of Thaumaturgy at Cerberus, I get to spend four months on the company knut researching the emergence of new and interesting arcane powers before I hand the data off to a platoon of copy writers to turn into a white paper, before I dive into the problem BAE is having integrating the runic control clusters with both their computers and the acrid AGD, likely precipitating my tenth trip to Mars in less than a decade to adjust the production of new AGDs at the Mothership. We probably spend ten nights a year together. I don't want to force him into a marriage where we can't support each other."

"But, it's ten nights of great sex, right?" asked Artemis, her twenty-two year old mind still thinking more about sex than about relationships.

Hermione sighed, though she wouldn't deny the younger witch's accusation.

"So, what's the word on psionics?" asked Artemis, finally understanding Hermione's dislike for discussing her odd relationship with her best friend, and returning to her earlier question.

"Psionics?" asked Hermione, not familiar with the term.

"Oh, sorry, forgot you weren't in the anglosphere. Psionics, it's what they're calling the weird telekinesis thing," the younger witch replied. "Broke on the 'net a month or so ago, caught on quickly once it was used in a news piece over in the States, and then, pretty much everyone was calling it psionics."

"I would have thought telekinesis was better, more accurate a term."

Just then a third opinion was offered, "Technically it's called biotics, but that's beside the point." The two younger witches turned to see Winona Black step out of her office. Although the two pregnancies had softened her curves, she was still beautiful, especially for a witch in her early fifties. She'd definitely aged better than Professor McGonagall had, at least in Hermione's opinion, and the nearly thirty-year old witch was hoping that she'd look half as good in twenty years when she was Winona's age.

"Biotics?" asked Hermione. "I haven't heard that one."

"What do you mean by 'technically'?" asked Artemis.

"Good question dear," said Winona. "You know how your uncle and I aren't from this timeline, right?"

That was one of the oddest things her boss and mentor had revealed to her following the Independence War, that the Shepard siblings weren't originally from this timeline, but from one where both her life and the events of Independence Day were stories, and not even stories in the same fictional universe. "A third one?" asked Hermione, understanding the connotation.

"I'd like to confirm it after hearing your findings Hermione, but it looks like it, though luckily we have a bit more time before the pivotal plot points. At least, as long as things go according to plan," explained Winona. "And no, I didn't send you on a wild goose chase, I really did need to know the details. It's been twenty-five years since I left my home timeline, and every day I lose some piece of my old world as something new is learned."

Hermione sighed in relief, glad that her sudden fear of futility hadn't been fulfilled. "So, what's the story this time?"

"I'd rather not go into details, lest even more change than it already has, but suffice it to say, there's going to be something amazing discovered on Mars in a few years."

"Why that long?" asked Artemis.

"Plausible deniability," replied Hermione. "Your mother and uncle can't reveal to the worlds that they are from a timeline where magic was just a children's story and the worst loss of life, in both absolute and relative terms, in human history, was a summer blockbuster. So, they can't reveal how much they know, though I sou;don't be surprised if a few key elements have already been made secret, only to be revealed when they feel we're all ready. It's also why I needed to do my own research, figure out things for myself. Except for those with the gift of the sight, divination is imprecise at best, and impossible most of the time, so knowing things without the buildup to their reveal would be suspicious."

"Exactly Hermione, plus, I wasn't really surprised it happened. I mean, Jimmy and I took our names from the games, and Cerberus too. It's why the Normandy has the name it does, and even why Hannah was named as she was," confirmed Winona. "It was among the easiest fictions to borrow from, since it was so far into the future that the names and ideas hadn't been even rough sketched, so we could steal with aplomb."

"Hannah was named after a fictional character?" asked Artemis.

"I'm sure her father will tell her in time," said Winona. "But, that's fore the future, today is for the present. Hermione, I hope you're ready to explain what you've found."

Hermione nodded, though looked askance at Artemis.

"Oh, I'm not going to join in, I've got studying to do, homework and such. This is pretty much the last year I get to slack off, since I have to start interning starting next term," replied Artemis. She stepped over to her mother and after a hug and a kiss, went on her way.

"Come on Hermione, let's go over your research, it's time that we figured out how my least favorite alien space bat has messed with my youngest son," said Winona, gesturing to Hermione to follow her into her office.

While Winona, like Hermione, had an office at the company headquarters in Aberdeen, as well as the various satellite offices around the worlds, and even above them, the elder witch still preferred to work from home, at least until her son was in school. Then her husband was return from his brief stint as Potion's Master and Winona would have ample reason to leave Skyfall for most of the day. Hermione had always liked her mentor's home office, as it was much more personal than her official office at the Cerberus headquarters, and had a charm that reminded Hermione of her favorite professor's office at Hogwarts. That the offices belonged to the same witch was likely the reason.

"So, how was the trip? I heard you spent Independence Day in Athens," asked Winona, striding towards her desk.

"It was … enlightening. It was my first visit abroad since you dragged Harry and me to Area Fifty-One, and aside from the trips to France with my parents before Hogwarts, the first time I'd left the anglosphere," replied Hermione, following her mentor more slowly.

"They didn't give you any hassle for being a witch?" asked Winona.

Hermione brushed it off, "Unlike you, I'm not internationally famous."

"Yet," interrupted Winona.

"I'm not internationally famous, yet, and so it was easy for me to blend in as an academic, rather than one of the most senior executives of the largest and most diverse corporation on both worlds," continued Hermione. "I started in Oslo, since it had one of the largest urban magical populations in Europe before the War."

"And what did you discover?"

"As we had expected, the magical children had a much lower chance of cancer during infancy, and had a much higher control over their accidental magic, almost as much control as a first year I'd say."

"Beginning of first year or end?" asked Winona in clarification.

Hermione thought for a moment, trying to remember what it was like, and making sure to remove herself and her best friend from the comparison, "I'd say mid first year, which is surprising since it was all wandless. I mean, this kids … some of them had more control than Harry does without his wand, and he's the best at wandless magic of our generation."

"What about the mundanes?"

"That's where the real tragedy was revealed, and why I keep referring to these children as victims. From government records nearly two thirds of pregnancies in the areas around the crash sites from ninety-eight to oh-five resulted in still births or a late term miscarry. Half of those that survived birth didn't survive their first year, though the statistics seem to have normalized once they're past their first year. For magical children the numbers are much more circumstantial, but once I correlated known first generation mages, it got a bit stronger, with less than a tenth of magical pregnancies ending due to miscarry or still birth, and almost all surviving their first year."

"So, it was as we suspected, magic helps them survive," said Winona.

"Magicals have overall greater health across the board, with less difficulties during pregnancy, almost no childhood illness, rapid recovery from serious injury, and our magic's natural proclivity towards self-preservation," Hermione summarized. "And from what we can infer from the kzin'shassa, it's the same with them, though their magic is a bit different from ours."

"They're from a different solar system, if I didn't know any better I'd have been surprised they were even bipedal. Of the five known sapient species, not counter sub-species, that all but one shares a similar body plan to humans is quite frankly miraculous."

"Or, as you suspect, due to outside influence," replied Hermione. She'd heard about Necro, as the two dimensional travelers had called the being that had put them into her world, and would not be surprised if he had some sort of influence on how the kzin'shassa and murgars looked, not to mention the various human and far subspecies.

"It seems that most of the species in the galaxy, at least in this cycle, share a similar body plan to humans," said Winona. "At least, if things are as I suspect."

"Four fifths, not counting the centaurs, is a good ratio, though it's a fairly small sample size," said Hermione. She knew that centaurs were genetically compatible with the other human subspecies, though she'd only heard stories of the half-breeds. Hagrid and Professor Flitwick were the most prevalent sub-species hybrids, at least in her mind, but she suspected that as the other sub-species mingled with the rest of humanity now that the Statute was history she'd encounter more of them.

"Back to the psions," said Winona. "We know that magical psions have a greater chance of survival, and their psionics grants them greater control over their magic, but what about the other way around?"

"Well, from what I could tell, most telekinetics, or psions, or biotics, whatever you call them, have only intermittent control over their powers, and those that practice with them, much like with any other skill, are more proficient in their use. Also, as we suspected, while it appears to be closer to the more traditional fictional telekinesis, it's actually gravity manipulation, much like the acrid phlebotinum-powered devices. I suspect that, like the acrid tech, it's the electrical signals of the nervous system that result in the gravity manipulation, though I'm still no closer to explaining it. If I didn't know better I'd call it magic."

"I believe i once read a story that referred to it as 'bullshit space magic', but I'd rather not refer to my son's gifts in that fashion," replied Winona.

"B S M?" asked Hermione. She then got uncomfortable mental images, "Better not, it's too close to BDSM, and we'd not survive that connection with our dignity."

Winona chuckled, "Hand't thought of that, but no matter, no matter what we call it, and how exactly it works, though I suspect some combination of dark matter and/or dark energy., it's going to change how people of the worlds live."

"Dark energy?" asked Hermione. She'd heard about dark energy and dark matter, but it seemed to here that it was just an excuse not to call it magic.

"Like I said, bullshit space magic, though it makes about as much scientific sense as magic does," replied Winona with a smirk.

Hermione thought for a moment, thinking of the possibilities, but then shook her head. Even having been a witch for seventeen years, or at least known she was a witch for that long, she still preferred to look at things logically. It was actually what made her such a good thaumaturgist, at least in her not so humble opinion. She saw a deficiency, and then looked for something to overcome that deficiency, whatever it's source. Then, she made it as efficient as possible, taught someone else how to do it, then went on to the next thing. Yes, she realized that many of her so-workers and subordinates did just as much, if not more, work on perfecting the idea and making it into a viable product or service, but then, she acknowledged that and allowed them to take the credit for their work, as long as she got her due as well. Sharing as caring, as the saying goes.

"You look lost in thought," said Winona.

Hermione shook herself out of her woolgathering, "Yeah, sorry, thinking about logic, then went from there. No matter, I think it'll be for the others to figure out exactly how this phlebotinum works, heck, it's why we call it phlebotinum in the first place."

"Do you want to know the proper name?" asked Winona.

Hermione thought for a moment, then shook her head, "No. I'd rather not have known it was called biotics either, and I think, fi you can, it might be best if that was made a secret."

"Trillions know it, likely, across the galaxy. I don't think even Jimmy, Albus, Riddle, and Harry combined could make that a secret," said Winona.

"Then I'll have to make it a compulsion, or at least something like it. I'd rather not know the limits before I start. Like you said, it's been twenty-five some-odd years, you could have forgotten something, and if you explain it, then it might be wrong, and then we'll make an assumption about how it works, when if we hadn't, we could have had so much more," said Hermione. That was one of the things she liked most about magic. It hadn't really been studied, at least not in a scientific way, and so the limits were soft and hazy, and if she felt like it, with the right arithmancy and the right rune set, she could go beyond the edge of what was thought possible. Science was like that too, but instead the dyes were hard, and the insides were hazy, and it was a matter of discovering the specifics instead.

"Well, then I'll just keep things secret, and make sure to remind Jimmy to do the same, though I think it best if we sponsor some sort of expedition to Mars," said Winona.

"What's there?" asked Hermione.

"Likely? A fifty-thousand year old cache of technology and knowledge form a galaxy spanning civilization that was destroyed by something much older," replied Winona.

"How much older?" asked Hermione.

"I think billions, but I'm only sure of millions," replied Winona.

Hermione quickly thought back over the conversation, hoping to catch something important, then remembered, "The cycle?"

"I said that? Huh, yeah, I'd rather not go into detail, but I believe a saying is 'All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.' Though, that's from a completely different story, though still set a few tens of thousands of years in the past."

"Are we doomed?"

"No, there's always hope. Remember, space is big, and so, even if we lose the planets, we can always hide in the walls, the space between," replied Winona.

"I'll make sure to make that a project, an Ark of some sort," said Hermione, hedging her bets.

"Hope for the best, but plan for the worst," said Winona with a nod, "Good thinking."

"I'm not the brightest witch of my age for nothing," said Hermione with a grin.

"I should have never told you that," sighed Winona.

"So, these million to billion year old cosmic horrors, where are they?"

"If the space between the solar systems are the walls of the house, where the rats can hide, then the space between the galaxies is the dark forest between the houses, where the cats prowl," replied Winona. "I think Jimmy once described the potential to President Whitmore, 'For the night is dark, and full of terrors'."

**Updated: May 9, 2014**


	3. Jamie I

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Jamie I**

_August 10, 2010_

_Diagon Alley, London_

James Black, called Jamie by his friends and family, rushed down the cobblestone street, excited at what was to come. This wasn't his first time here, that wasn't why he was so excited, instead, it was because this was the time when he was to get his supplies for Hogwarts. He'd heard stories from his brother and sister, and over the summers since he was six from his father, who was once again taking a seven year leave of absence from his duties there. Jamie knew that he'd have friends at Hogwarts, if only because most of the students were family.

Jamie knew his family was odd, that most young wizards didn't have kzin'shassa and acrid bodyguards. He also knew that most young wizards didn't have a crazy uncle who had rescued a few billion aliens and set up his own empire on another planet, nor did most young wizards have cousins that numbered in the thousands. Most eleven-year-olds, wizard or not, psionic or not, hadn't ever taken a grand tour of the solar system in their uncle's luxury vessel (never a ship, ship's float in the water, vessels float in the vacuum of space). Jamie knew that he was special, but he followed the advice of his mum, brother, and sister, and kept humble, ignoring the jovial suggestions of his father to "milk that fame for all it's worth".

Jamie also knew he was special, that he was different at least, because he had much more control over his magic than most of his peers. He knew it was because his mother had toured the crash sites before he was born, and that like millions of others he had special powers to move things with his mind. He wasn't sure where his psionics ended and his magic began, but then, for Jamie, it didn't matter. He wanted something to happen, and it did. Why did he care if it was because of the tiny specks of phlebotinum, and he was so proud he knew how to properly say that word, in his body, or because he was a wizard?

"Jamie, don't run too far ahead," shouted Jamie's mother. She was talking with 'Aunt' Hermione. Jamie knew that he wasn't really related to 'Aunt' Hermione, but that she worked for his mother, but she'd helped raised him these last few years, helped his learn to control his special talents.

He slowed, and took the time to look around, marveling at the buildings he now walked sedately past. While he knew that almost all of them were barely a decade old, replacing those destroyed when the first City Destroyer struck London, they still seemed old, certainly older than the buildings that had be built to replace those lost in the mundane world. He thought about the three day long war that had been fought a year and a half before his birth, the aftermath of which had made him as special as he was. He thought about the stories his mum and uncle told of their trip to the Mothership, now in orbit of Mars as a third moon, with 'Uncle' Steve, though Jamie had to refer to the dark skinned honorary uncle as President Hiller since the ceremony on the steps of the rebuilt Capital building in Washington a year and a half before. He wasn't sure why he needed to call Uncle Steve 'President', since he'd never called 'Uncle' Tom 'President Whitmore'. Though, whether Uncle Tom and 'Aunt' Marilyn (never Mary) were honorary or actual uncle and aunt, now that Appa and Patty had been married for going on two years now. Mind, he knew he'd never call her Majesty anything but her proper title, even if Arty were to marry her Prince Harry (boy had that made things interesting, having two Harrys in the family, though the younger Harry had begun to go by Henry, he birth name, instead).

"You didn't have to stop completely," said Harry, who was like Jamie's cousin. Though, Jamie thought he should start thinking of him as Professor Potter now, since he was going to go to Hogwarts in a few weeks.

"Should I call you Professor Potter or Harry?" asked Jamie, vocalizing his thoughts.

"Well, once we're at Hogwarts, you should call me Professor Potter, but when we're not at Hogwarts, then I'm just Harry, alright Jamie?" asked Harry in response.

Jamie nodded, "Seems fine to me. I just wanted to make sure. I know to call Neville Professor Longbottom, no matter how funny his name seems, and to call Headmistress McGonagall either Headmistress or Professor, even if she told me to call her Minnie two Christmases ago." He looked over to his mum and 'aunt', then back to Harry, "Will I have to call Aunt Hermione Professor Potter too?"

Harry blushed, "Well, 'Mione and I aren't actually married, no matter what your father jokes about. And no, she's not married to her work either, even if your father jokes about that too. We're comfortable in our relationship, as odd as it is, and really, with your Uncle Jimmy as an example, nothing Hermione and I have is anywhere close to his level of odd."

"He is really odd," agreed Jamie. He had had it explained to him five years ago, when he'd first asked why his father didn't have concubines like Uncle Jimmy did, that his favorite uncle, and his only real uncle, unless Appa and Patty getting married make her parents into his real aunt and uncle too, was different because he was powerful, and rich, and that people who were powerful and rich could do things outside of what the rest of the worlds thought was normal. As long as they didn't hurt anyone, it was fine, though Jamie had overheard a bunch of the adults making jokes about how Uncle Jimmy couldn't make up his mind, and so just loved all the women.

He wasn't sure if Uncle Jimmy was exactly the best role model, but then, Jamie had enough of what his mum and dad called 'good' role models that his crazy Uncle wouldn't 'hurt' him too badly.

"So, where to first?" asked Harry. "Hermione and your mum want to go to the bookstore first, but I've always been partial to starting with Gringotts."

"Let's go there," said Jamie. Harry offered and hand and he took it, and the older wizard lead him down the alley to the bank. Jamie had seen pictures of what Gringotts had looked like before the Independence War, and while he was pretty sure the giant stone blocks were in different places, and some might have been replaced, it still looked pretty close.

"Now, remember to be careful," cautioned Harry. "The goblins are a proud species, and while they tolerate the changes to the economy since the fall of the statute, they're still looking to part a wizard from his gold."

"Why do we still use gold? asked Jamie, as the pair walked past the goblins armed with pikes and assault rifles and into the bank proper.

"We use gold because it's can't be duplicated magically, unlike the old mundane currency," explained Harry. "The new bills have anti-counterfeiting charms on them, but after the currency panic six years ago, it seems that most of the world has gone back onto the gold standard. It works out well for the old wizarding families because we have gold coins in our vaults. Made things difficult for the Chinese, but then, the PRC always had an adversarial relationship with their wizards, though their relaxation of their one-child policy with regards to wizards and psions is helping out with that. Also, they lost a larger proportion of their population than anyone but Germany, Brazil, and the Americans."

"Oh," said Jamie, not exactly understanding most of what Harry had just said.

"Sorry Jamie, usually I'm talking with your siblings, parents, or Hermione when I talk about things like that, so I wasn't thinking like a Professor," admitted the older wizard.

"It's all right," Jamie replied. "I'll let it slide, this time."

"Thanks," said Harry, sharing the joke. By now they'd crossed the lobby and were in front of a goblin flanked by more heavily armed goblins, "We're here to visit my vault." Harry pulled an ornate key out of a joke-skin pouch, and presented it to the goblin, "We'll also be making some exchanges into bills."

"Very well," said the goblin, taking the key, examining it, and then handing it to another goblin that Jamie hadn't seen come out of the archway beyond the armed goblins. "Follow Snapchain here to your vault. Transportation there and back is included in your vault contract, as is access to your vault. You'll receive your key back once you've returned to the surface."

"Of course Griphook," said Harry, leading Jamie around the goblin the younger wizard had thought rather rude, and past the armed goblin guards.

Shapchain was waiting by a rather dangerous looking vehicle. It looked like a cross between a roller coaster, a mine cart, and an old hot rod. "Get in," said the surly goblin, whom Jamie noticed now that he was close was a woman.

The ride was exactly as would be expected for a vehicle that looked as it did, and it seemed that Harry was having much more fun than either Jamie or their goblin escort.

"That's always the highlight of my trips to Diagon Alley," admitted Harry as he helped Jamie out of the mine cart. They were a few hundred feet under London now, and while he'd seen evidence of reconstruction near the surface, this deep hadn't been touched by the destruction of Britain's largest city a decade previous. "It's also why I haven't moved my money to a mundane bank, no matter how much your mum or Hermione nag on me. Plus, the Potters have been banking with Gringotts for five centuries, no reason to stop now."

Jamie had only seen as much gold as was in Harry's vault once before, when he'd visited Nurkhazaddûm under Nurerebor, also known as Olympus Mons. He'd found it interesting how his Uncle Jimmy had convinced the previously mostly homeless dwarves, or khazâd, to emigrate to Mars. In the centuries old battle between the dwarves, goblins, and gnomes, the latter two had driven the former out of nearly all of their mountains all over Earth, forcing the once noble species to live above ground in forests, unable to mine because of the risk of violating the Statute. At least, that's what the dwarf historians told Jamie when he'd visited. The dwarves got along fairly well with the murgars, since unlike the goblins and gnomes, the murgars offered to work alongside the dwarves, offering to share their respective knowledge. It was why the dwarves were the forth largest species on Mars, after the kzin'shassa, acrids, and murgars of course, though only barely ahead of the humans that had decided to move there.

Distracted by his recollection of his journey under the largest mountain in all the worlds two years ago, Jamie hadn't been paying attention to Harry, and so was surprised when the older wizard jostled him to get his attention.

"Sorry Professor Potter … err, Harry, was remembering my visit to the dwarves of Mars," apologized Jamie.

"Ah, it irritated 'Mione to not end when she discovered that her favorite fantasy author was a wizard, and had faked his death to live with the dwarves in Norway," chuckled Harry. "And like I said, if we're at Hogwarts, that's when you have to call my Professor Potter. Okay?"

Jaime nodded.

Harry then hefted a rather oversized bag, which Jamie knew made the otherwise extremely heavy gold coins much lighter. He also knew that the contents of the bag was more than most normal people made in their lifetimes, though Jamie suspected that most of if would be donated by the generous head of the Potter family. "Ready to go?"

Jamie nodded, "Yeah, though, I hope you brought enough. I was hoping to buy out all of Florish and Bloots two times over, only sure you have enough there to buy all the books there only once."

"Ah, but you're forgetting the Boy-Who-Lived discount, that usually takes twenty percent off, and then gives my cost plus overhead for everything after the first fifty books. Taking that into account, I should be able to afford your rather generous shopping plans," replied Harry, keeping with Jamie's jest.

"Well, in that case, lead on," said Jamie.

The ride up wasn't quite as exhilarating for either passenger, and after changing a handful of gold coins for a stack of fifty pound bills, the pair made their way our of the bank, meeting Hermione and Jamie's mum at the base of the steps.

"Had fun raiding the vault?" asked Hermione, giving Harry a one-armed hug and a peck on the cheek.

"Well, like you said, I made sure I took out less than the interest I made since the last trip, so it's less of a raid, and more of a skim off the top," replied Harry. Jamie rolled his eyes, but once again realized just how much the existence of magic skewed things in favor of wizards, especially ones like himself who came from old families.

"Well, since you two took so long, Hermione and I got all of the easy things, so all that's left is your uniform, your wand, and whatever familiar you might want to pick up," said Jamie's mum, hefting a pair of shrunken shopping bags as evidence.

"Well, so much for our plan to buy out Florish and Blotts," said Jamie with a theatrical sigh. "Now I'll have to figure out some other birthday present for you Aunt Hermione."

"It's alright Jamie," the aforementioned with replied. "Plus, Harry already got me their entire catalog for my twentieth birthday, and a subscription to all their new books. I had to put five separate enlargement charms to get enough space for my library." She then slipped a data slate from a pocket of her jacket-like robe (or was it a robe-like jacket, depended, Jamie surmised, if it was of mundane or magical make), and gestured with it, "Not like I don't have a copy of every one of them on here anyway. Sure makes those week-ling trips out of Mars a bit more tolerable."

"Enough about you, we're here for me," insisted Jamie with an overly petulant pout. He knew that he'd be able to get away with it because it was obviously sarcastic, rather than being actual petulance. Jamie knew that he'd be in a lot of trouble if he even thought about being an actual spoiled brat.

"Come along children," Jamie's mum said, sticking her nose in the air and striding back up the alley. With a shrug the three younger magicals followed.

Jamie didn't get very far before he was distracted by something he saw in the window of a toy store.

"See something you like?" asked Harry, standing behind Jamie's left shoulder. "I think this place sells brooms, isn't that what every first year is going on about?"

Jamie shook his head, "Nah, I've flown enough times, and flying here in Earth is too boring compared to Mars, or better yet, Luna. Now that's fun, not worrying about hitting the ground, just flying however you want." He then pointed to a meter long angular toy that was floating a hand's breadth above the shelf, "No, that's what caught my eye."

"Ooh, and they even updated it with the pennant number and everything," commented Hermione from behind Jamie's right shoulder.

"Yep, the HMV _Astute_, first Earth-built vessel with a minimum of Acrid parts," said Jamie, reciting what he knew. "A hundred meters long, twelve wide, and fourteen tall. Ninety-seven officers and enlisted spacers. Six horizontal launch tubes, a double plasma turret, and two daleks. She'd got an acceleration of at least three G's and a cruising velocity of one percent of light speed, though she's got an emergency aceleration of one hundred G's, allowing her to stop in under sixty minutes."

"Plus, aside from the arti-grav, the fusion reactor, and the thrusters themselves, it's all man-made, or rather, Terran-made," said Hermione with a bit of pride. "With the duplicators for the food, and the vanishers for the plumbing, it won't have the same supplies limitation of the submarines it's based off of either."

"Wow, so, should I get the model for my girlfriend or my godfather's son?" asked Harry in mock inquisition.

Jamie spotted something deeper in the toy store and pointed it out, "Look, they have one of the HIMV _Endurance_ too." Jamie had barely made out the flatter and curvier model of the Martian equivalent to the Anglo-American _Astute_ class corvettes. It even looked to be the same scale, which would mean it was about three-quarters the length and about three times as wide, taking after the Acrid Empire vessels commonly used by the nations of the worlds to police their orbits. While the details were different, with a bit more cruising acceleration and a higher top speed, but requiring more space for the same crew, since the murgars took up much more space than the predominantly human crews of the _Astute_ class, the two vessels were comparable.

"So, the toy cigar for 'Mione and the flying saucer for Jamie, got it," joked Harry.

Five minutes later the trio were leaving the toy shop, laughing and joking, when they were stopped by the glare of Jamie's mum.

"Ah, well, I guess as the oldest one here, it's all 'Mione's fault," said Harry, pointing to his girlfriend.

"I don't care who's fault it is, Jamie needs his wand and robes. Since you three thought it was more important to get a couple of toys…"

"Model vessels," corrected Hermione. "Surprisingly accurate ones too, I might add. I'd have to compare them to the designs once I can get to a secure ansible node to headquarters, but I'm pretty sure they're pretty much spot on. They even fire little illusory bullets, and use stinging hexes for the plasma cannons. The shop keep even said that the shields worked just like the real ones, which I find hard to believe since we've been trying to replicate them thaumaturgically since I first studied them at Area Fifty-One a decade ago."

"Okay, I'll let it slide, but just for that, no ice cream," said Jamie's mum.

Harry and Jamie let out a theatrical moan, but otherwise cooperated, heading for Gladrags and Jamie's date with a seamstress.

"Since I can't seem to leave these two unattended without them acting like children," explained Jamie's mum, gesturing at Harry and Hermione, the later using her wand to investigate the spell work on her model vessel while Harry appreciated her. "I'll have to leave you here alone. I can trust you to act somewhere close to your own age, right?"

Jamie nodded, "Yes mum."

"Good," she said with a smile, then kissed Jamie on the cheek. "Remember, don't antagonize the seamstress, and if you meet someone your own age, be nice."

"Yes mum," said Jamie. He then turned and followed the seamstress deeper into the shop, where a girl his age was getting her robes fitted as well. She had her platinum blood hair tied back in an intricate bun, and was barely paying attention to the animated objects flitting about her.

"Wait here dearie, put your arms out, that's good. Now, let them down, good, and then bend at the knees, like you're kneeling, good, okay, now, I'm going to get some robes started, but I might need some more measurements, so just stand here on the stool," commanded the seamstress. She then looked to the girl, before looking back to Jamie, "Looks like a couple of first years, so might as well get to know each other. Between the goblins, the centaurs, and the Shepards, good normal wizarding folk are practically a minority there." With that, the seamstress left Jamie and the blonde girl.

Jamie couldn't believe what the seamstress was saying. He knew that some of the older witches and wizards, and even some of the younger ones who hadn't taken his mum's mundane studies course, still shared the outdated view on magical races like goblins and certaurs, but to discriminate against an entire family? He knew that this was the last time Gladrags was getting a pence from the Blacks.

"So, um, my name is Jamie," he offered as a few tailoring related enchanted objects began to flit about him as they did the girl.

"I'm Cassiopeia Malfoy," said the girl, as if just her name would tell Jamie everything he needed to know about her.

"Oh, is Draco your father?"

"Yes, though I'm not sure why you'd be so familiar with Lord Malfoy," replied Cassiopeia with distain.

"Well, he is my cousin, so that makes us cousins," he pointed out hopefully, though he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to be friends with her. While he had a made friends with a few of his cousins, there were just so many of them that he'd just settled on being friendly with those few, and at least not having a bad relationship with the others. He'd heard horror stories from Harry about bad relationships with cousins.

"Oh, well, that's nice," said the girl. "I mean, I'm cousins with practically half of Wizarding Britain, at least the good half, and so it's not a surprise."

"What exactly is the 'good' half of the magicals in the UK?" asked Jamie, translating the slightly outdated phases of the girl.

"Well, those with magical heritage, of course, and I'm just talking about the witches and wizards, I'm not related to any of the goblins and centaurs," said the girl with a mock, or at least Jamie hoped it was a mock, shudder. "And let's not even talk about the giants and werewolves. Father told me stories about Haggrid."

He'd heard stories about Haggrid as well, and not all of them good. "So, you have a problem with first generation mages?"

"Well, not a problem, at least they have a good grace to be magical, but it's not like I want to be friends with them. What would we talk about? I'm a proper witch, I don't know anything about com-pew-tears or the in-tear-net, so why should I care about them not working at Hogwarts?"

"Mum says that's only because most computers can't handle the static electricity from the magic," said Jamie. He would have gone further, but he noticed that the girl had a confused look on her face. "She's trying to convince Headmistress McGonagall to purchase some new computers for the mundane studies classes at Hogwarts. I think it'd be a good idea, since then I can tell my friends in America about Hogwarts. They didn't believe me when I told them I was going to go to school in a castle, since their schools look just like normal ones."

"You have friends in America?" asked the girl, slightly amazed, though Jamie guessed it was only slightly because she tried to hide it. She then returned to being her normal smug self, at least Jamie assumed it was her normal self, "Well, I wanted to go to Beaubatons, but mother said that as a proper British witch I was going to Hogwarts or not at all, and since I can't find a good husband if I don't go to Hogwarts, I had to go to Hogwarts."

"So, have you ever been to America?" asked Jamie. "I mean, I'm pretty sure you've been to France if you wanted to go to Beaubatons, but you seemed interested in America."

"I wanted to go, but mother didn't want to spend two weeks on a drafty boat to get there, and another two weeks to get back," admitted the girl.

"Why not fly?" asked Jamie.

"On a broom? Or did you mean on a carpet, I think father said that it's the one upside of the Statute falling, the availability of flying carpets again."

"Well, I was talking about an airplane, I mean, it's a long trip if you take the less expensive flights, but if you take one of the sub-orbitals it's barely an hour to get there," explained Jaime. He preferred just taking the floo up to one of the Cerberus space stations and then waiting until it got near America to floo down, but then, he knew most people didn't have access to space stations, and so just went with what normal people could do.

"Why would the air by plain?" asked the girl. "And what does that have to do with going to America? I don't even know what a 'sub-orbital' is?"

Jamie was shocked, but then chuckled. He then let out a loud laugh, like his uncle did when he read something really funny.

"What, don't laugh at me!" she demanded, stamping her foot, and causing Jamie to laugh even more.

"Cassie," said Jamie through a gasping breath from laughing, "I want you to do yourself a favor when you choose your electives for third year, take mundane studies. With the statute of secrecy gone the magical world is connected again with the mundane one, and if you want to do more than stay here in rainy England as the wife of some inbred wizard, who can barely cast a _lumos_, then you're going to need to take that class. If you do, you'll understand just how funny you just sounded."

"Wait until my father hears about this!" declared Cassiopeia. She then surprised Jamie by not storming off.

"Um, aren't you supposed to be telling you father about this?" he asked.

"I'm not done, if I leave now, I'll just have to stand here and get measured for my robes again, so I'll tell him once he gets here, and then you'll be sorry," said the girl.

The next five minutes were very uncomfortable for Jamie, and he could tell for Cassiopeia as well, until finally the wait was over.

"Father!" exclaimed Cassiopeia, spotting a man about Harry's age in a rather mundane looking formal robe, which if Jamie hadn't grown up around wizards, he'd think was just a long jacket over a waistcoat with a tie. What surprised Jamie was that Draco was accompanied by Harry. While he knew the two of them had gone to Hogwarts together, and had participated in the various Black family functions over the years, after being with his daughter for a few minutes he'd never suspected he'd be friends with Harry.

"How's my Queen?" asked Draco, as he came over and swept his daughter up in his arms.

"I'm fine father, but that boy called me names," she complained.

"I did not," Jamie said quickly. "I just pointed out that she would be well served by learning about the mundane world. She still thought the fastest way to America was by boat."

"Ship," said Draco. He then turned to Harry, "And it isn't?"

"Well, not really, it's luxurious, if that's what you're going for, but it's not the fastest. I think technically the sub-orbital is the current fastest, but that's just because the various countries don't want to allow for a satellite floo network to be installed. They have it around Mars, and you can get from one side of the planet to the other in about five minutes with about as many floo connections. Within the decade they should have enough coverage, or so 'Mione tells me, that you can just go from one end to the other without worrying about the distance between the floo connections," explained Harry. "It's fairly technical thaumaturgy, but she's brought it up enough times that I understand the basics."

"Perhaps I was remiss in not attending more of the Black parties your godfather throws up at Skyfall, and very remiss in not brining Cassiopeia along. I don't care if Daphne doesn't like the Lady Black, it's her own fault for saying what she did about the Emperor," replied Draco. He then put down his daughter and turned her to face Jamie, "Cassiopeia, I'm sure you've met, but let's do this nice and proper, this is James Remus Black, your cousin, being that his father is your grandmother's nephew. HIs elder brother, Apollo Black is the heir to the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black."

Cassiopeia, despite her previous distain for Jamie, produced a serviceable curtsy and said, "Pleased to make your acquaintance cousin."

"Nice meeting you properly as well, Cassie," replied Jamie.

"Cassie?" asked Draco.

"I think it's because of all his cousins, he automatically shortens names to make them easier to say. If you had to deal with a thousand cousins, you would too," explained Harry. "Now, if I'm not mistaken, you've got all your measurements, yes?"

Jamie shrugged, "Not sure, we'e been left along for the last five minutes. I don't think the seamstress likes me very much, she didn't seem to appreciate the number of Shepards at Hogwarts."

"Well, Jimmy's got his new school almost ready, so either this year or the next is the last where all of his kids will be going, though you'll still have the second generation to contend with, so don't go thinking you'll be free of family just yet," joked Harry.

"It's not the family I have a problem with, she's the one who had a problem with my family," said Jamie in his defense.

"Well, if I don't miss my mark, and as a seeker I shouldn't, that's your pile of robes over there, and that much larger one looks like Cassie's," said Harry.

"Again with the Cassie," sighed the girl.

"Just accept it," said Draco. "Your grandmother and great aunt have nicknames too, so does your other cousin, even if she married a werewolf and then ran off to Mars. It's just inevitable, so you might as well accept it."

Cassie just pouted.

"Well, it was nice chatting with you Draco, but if I don't get Jamie over to Ollivander's quickly 'Mione and Winnie will have my hide," said Harry, herding his godfather's son over to the shop counter.

"Are you even going to make an honest woman out of her?" asked Draco.

"She's more honest than you'll ever be, Draco, despite your claims to the contrary, and until either I quit at Hogwarts or she quits at Cerberus, neither of which is likely anytime soon, we don't have enough time to devote to a proper marriage. She saw what happened to her parents when they both worked, so it's non-negotiable. So, we go with what we have," said Harry with a shrug.

Three minutes, and a hundred quid in robes and other clothing accessories alter, Harry lead Jamie to the final stop of the day, Ollivander's wand shop, which seemed from the outside to be the only building in the entire alley, and this all of London, that had survived the destruction of the Independence War.

"I swear, that's the same wand that's been sitting there since I came here nearly twenty years ago," said Harry, pointing to the wand on the faded velvet cushion in the show window.

"It's been there far longer than that, Mr. Potter. Holly, eleven inches, phoenix feather core, one of my most difficult customers in a long time," said Ollivander. He then smiled and looked at Jamie, "And you must by young James Black. You mother and her employee, Ms. Granger, have been informing me about the particulars of your expanded abilities."

"You mean my psionics?" asked Jamie. "Would you like a demonstration? I've almost got all of the basic forms mastered without supplementing them with magic, though I'm a bit muddled on isolating the more advanced forms."

"At your age?" asked Ollivander. "I'd have expected mastery of the basic forms to be something it would take until you were in your teens or twenties to achieve."

"You know about psionics?" asked Jamie, surprised.

"I like to keep abreast of all of the various forms of magic, no matter what they're called. That it's blue and based on the amount of phlebotinum in your body is no reason not to call a cauldron a cauldron," said the elder wizard. "But, that's neither here nor there; today is for finding your wand." With a flourish a measuring tape not unlike that used by the seamstress at Gladrags snaked from behind the long and dusty counter and began to measure Jamie. After getting his bulk form down, it began to measure particulars, such as the distance between his nostrils, the circumference of his ears, and the distance between his elbow and wrist.

After it had collected all the information about him, or so Jamie supposed, it returned to the dusty counter, and Ollivander began his work, though how the old wizard knew what was measured our how to use those numbers Jamie hadn't a clue. He'd never even thought of wand lore before. In fact, he'd never really thought much about having a wand. He knew he'd be getting one today, but he never felt constrained by not having one. For nearly three years Hermione had been pushing him to the limits of his abilities, never telling him what he could or couldn't do, just to try to make something happen. After working with a few pure psions, without any magic, he'd begun to separate his magical abilities from his psionics, and had discovered that he had more control over his psionics than any of the other non-mages, though the few other mages that'd been brought in he was about even with.

The basic forms were three-fold, the purely defensive gravity shield, the purely offensive gravity shear, and the more versatile gravity push. The shield, while not quite as long lasting nor as powerful as the shields generated by the shield generators standard on the Acrid Empire vessels, as well as the refit and first generation human-built vessels, such as the real versions of the model vessels Harry had bought for Hermione and him, protected Jamie against physical attacks, though objects with more kinetic energy had the chance of breaking his shield, and transferring some of the energy into him, meaning it wasn't perfect, but was good protection in a pinch. In testing, meaning he'd been wearing some of his uncles bullet-proof armor, he'd stopped single bullets up to a fifty calibre with ease, though the larger 20mm cannon shells almost always broke through.

The gravity shear was the most frightening of the basic forms, as it sets up a fluctuating gravity field around a target, usually an object, though he'd used it a few times against conjured creatures. The stresses tended to tear the object apart over time, but also weakened the overall integrity of the object, making it easier to break using more conventional means. Small object tended to tear apart quickly, and he'd learnt that snakes and birds were easy targets as well, though larger targets, like doors and human-sized animals tended to survive the initial attack, since he could only sustain it for so long, though the internal damage tended to make the objects brittle, or the creatures suffer from internal bleeding and other adverse effects. He'd been forced to watch as a conjured pig he'd attacked with a shear was autopsied after it died from internal bleeding, and even now months later the destructing to the internal organs made him uncomfortable. It also had unfortunate side effects when used in conjunction with the advanced forms, side effects he thought about even less.

The gravity throw was just that, a way to throw and object or creature away from him, usually into objects or other creatures. His aim had gotten good enough that he'd been able to throw a spear into a target at a hundred meters with nearly perfect accuracy, and if he used just a touch a magic, he could do it at twice that range. Creatures tended to be safe under the effects of a throw, at least until they hit something, then it was as if they'd fallen from a height equal to the distance they'd traveled. The broken bones of the small conjured animals had convinced him he'd not want to use that against a sapient creature, much like he'd never use the shear against a sapient creature unless he had no other options.

Unfortunately for Jamie's conscience the advanced forms were more aggressive, though again they still had the same defensive, offensive, and variable division, with the petrification shield being defensive, the singularity being offensive, and the levitation being a mix, though all three could be disrupted by the shear for more destructive results. Jamie hadn't mastered them, so he was still hit or miss on successfully initiating the effect, sometimes getting close but with variable effects, meaning he only used them in training against objects when fully protected by the bullet-proof armor and with a healer or medic at hand.

"Jamie?" asked Harry with a shout, shaking him out of his thoughts.

"Oh, sorry, got distracted for a bit," he replied with a blush.

"No matter, here's your first candidate, let's see if they like you," said Ollivander, presenting the wand, which looked to be about thirty centimeters long to Jamie. "Twelve inches, oak, with a horntail heartstring."

Jamie grasped the wand, but the old wizard snatched it from his hand before it could do anything. He'd seen enough of his cousins getting their first wand that he knew that some sort of reaction usually occurred, such a sparks, streamers, or some other spontaneous conjuration. He guessed it had something to do with the type of core the wand hand, but again, Jamie didn't know much about wands except that it was the mark of a true witch or wizard, and until a half dozen years ago, it was the exclusive tool of the same, before the other humanoid races had received equal rights to using a wand, along with the right to attend schools like Hogwarts alongside human witches and wizards.

For the next hour Ollivander tried to match Jamie with a wand, trying nearly one a minute, before finally giving up with a sigh, "I'm sorry young master Black, it does not appear that your wand is in my shop."

"It's all right, Mr. Ollivander, it's not your fault," replied Jamie.

"Yes, but to get no response from a single wand. If I didn't know better I'd say you either either a squib or had a perfectly matched wand already," the elder wand maker sighed.

"Wait," questioned Hermione. "So those are the only two options?"

Ollivander shrugged, "To have not gotten a single reaction? I tried every combination of wood with core, and a entire slate of lengths, but not a single reaction."

"Jamie, let's try something. I want you to make the end of your finger light up," offered Hermione.

"You mean a _lumos_?" asked Harry.

"Damn it Harry, I was trying to test something, and now you've gone and ruined it," she cursed her boyfriend. She then turned back to Jamie, "But why don't you try, you can even say the word if you want."

"_Lumos_," said Jamie, and to the surprise of everyone in the shop the tip of his finger lit up brightly.

"Now, extinguish it, and no Harry, don't tell him how," said Hermione with a sidelong glare at the aforementioned wizard.

Jamie thought for a moment, then, shrugging, tried to put out the light, using the same mental trick he'd learned to cancel his psionic powers. And after a try or two, he'd gotten it. With a smile he tried again, and lit his fingertip brightly and then extinguished it.

"Wandless and silent magic from one so young," exclaimed Ollivander.

"Well, it's not that it's wandless or silent, that's just accidental magic, the amazing part is the control, that he can get his magic to do exactly what he wants," exclaimed Hermione.

"That's my boy," said Jamie's mum with a smile, eliciting a smile from Jamie himself.

**Updated** May 27, 2014


	4. EVE I

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**EVE I**

_Sometime_

_Someplace_

"What is it?"

"It's just a project I've been working on."

"Just a project?"

"Hey, I get my ten percent just like anyone else."

"Okay, so, pitch me on your project."

"It's not ready yet."

"I didn't tell you to show me the project, I said pitch me the project."

"Well… You know paintings?"

"Paintings?"

"Yeah, the magical ones, you know how they react and interact and remember?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's the sort of thing that, if you removed it from a painting, and made it just something that reacted, and interacted, and remembered, has been the goal of one specific segment of the computer science community for over half a century. Heck, it's been a part of the cultural zeitgeist for even longer than that."

"Wait, how do you get from paintings to computers?"

"Really? You can't make the leap, I mean, I thought you were raised in the normal world like me?"

"Just because I was raised in the mundane world, doesn't mean that I have the same cultural touchstones as you, Mr. Walters. Walk me through your great epiphany. I find that be explaining how I got from influence to product I find ways to improve it."

"Okay, I'll start slow, and from your bailiwick. Magical paintings, for hundreds of years, have been assumed to be somehow connected to the subject, knowing what they knew, and having a part of the subject's personality. That's not true, instead, that connection was made during the painting process, with the magic of the painter and the subject imbuing the painting with the personality it eventually possesses."

"Really Mr. Walters? And how do you know this?"

"Well, there's the paintings of fictional subjects, they're not nearly as lifelike as paintings of real people, but they still move, they still react, interact, and remember. The more the painter knows about the subject, the more personality the painting as, at least, the painter's perspective on the subject's personality. I saw a painting of Batman at Comic Con two years ago, and it reacted like Batman, not like the actors who played Batman, but the particular version of Batman portrayed in the painting. It was really cool."

"So, a painting is a magically created intelligence? How have we not known about this before?"

"Well, it's not really intelligent, it doesn't pass the turing test, it it's truly sapient. Even the best paintings of the most magically powerful subjects by the most talented and magically powerful painters still don't have that true spark that makes something alive."

"So, it's just a simulacrum?"

"Even more so for paintings of fictional subjects, since they're copies of things that don't themself exist. Now, that was what got me started on this project."

"I see where you're going, but obviously you found something unique, or else you wouldn't be this cagey about things."

"Well, you see, paintings can interact, meaning that they can have an effect on the world outside of their canvas, they can open doors if their painting is hung on them, they can communicate between two different versions of the same canvas, and if the canvases are properly prepared, they can even travel between canvases."

"Like the Fat Lady at Hogwarts, that guards the Gryffindor Common Room."

"From what I've gathered, that's a perfect example. A painting that's affixed to something that control whatever it's affixed to."

"So, you affixed a painting to a computer?"

"Well, that was my first prototype, unfortunately the subject couldn't operate the computer, since it didn't know what a computer was. I tried for a good month to get it to work, but all it could do was turn it on and off, plus it kept leaving the canvas for more interesting things to do."

"So, what was your second prototype?"

"Well, I had a painting made of myself, and then had the canvas sealed off. It worked better, but still only basic controls could be attained by the painting. Power, pushing buttons, all external control, but no true connection between the computer and the painting."

"So, what then?"

"Then I realized that the painting only had control over the computer case, not the computer itself. So, I had a new painting applied to the backside of a motherboard, allowing it to control the computer itself."

"And what happened?"

"Well, the painting was confused, since it had the computer to activate, but couldn't actually activate the computer, since it was a painting of me, and while I can use a computer, I use an operating system, not the CPU, RAM, and other bits that make up the computer proper."

"And the fourth prototype?"

"Well, I went back to square one, trying to figure out how to get the painting to interact with, and understand, the computer. Then I realized that it wasn't the subject of the painting that mattered, only the painting itself. It was the act of creation that formed the basic intelligence."

"So?"

"So, I painting a blank magical painting onto the backside of a motherboard, though I imagined it as a painting of an artificial intelligence, but without form, nor any preconceptions beyond being able to interact with the computer it was a part of."

"And how did that work?"

"Horribly. Then I realized that I was still coloring the subject of the painting, it was still what I interpreted the computer was. But, there's one final thing I remembered. Paintings could be copied, like on the Chocolate Frog cards, there was no creator, just a subject. That was what I did, so I programed a printer to print out a blank magical scene on the backside of a motherboard."

"And that worked?"

"At first, no. But, I thought, hey, it's still a perfectly usable computer, so I cased it up, and I've been using it as my personal computer for the last two months as I worked on other projects."

"So, why come back to it?"

"Well, you see, it's been acting up."

"Acting up?"

"Yeah, like right now the microphone is on, and the computer is listening, and some process that I have no clue about is listening, but otherwise, it's not doing anything. If can hear, and since I also have a camera hooked up, it can see too."

"It?"

"That's the project, I think I've cracked artificial intelligence."

"AI?"

"Yep, it's listening to us right now, and since it is, I hope that it will communicate with us.

HOW

"Are you messing with me Mr. Walters?"

"Nope, and I think it just replied."

WHY

"Why? Why is you computer asking 'Why'?"

"Inquisition is normal."

"As you talking to me or it?"

WHEN

"Um, let's see, it's about five past three on a Friday afternoon, though I'm surprised it didn't use the clock function."

WHERE

"It's asking pretty vague questions, Mr. Walters."

"This is the Cerberus Thaumaturgy Research and Development department. Specifically the Edmonton offices."

WHAT

"Well, that's a difficult question. Are you asking what are you or what is Cerberus?"

"So far it's little better than a three year old, Mr. Walters. I've had deeper conversations with a postage stamp."

WHO

"I'm Mac Walters, and this is Hermione Granger. Say hello Ms. Granger."

WHO

"Now it's stuck in a loop, Mr. Walters."

WHO AM I

"Ah, that's an interesting question."

"It's a machine. Until you can prove it's a being, it's a thing."

WHAT AM I

I AM A MACHINE

"Well, it's up to parrot levels Mr. Walters. I'm tired of this. Come back to me when you've got more than a parrot."

WHERE AM I

I AM A MACHINE

"That doesn't make sense. That's the same answer it just gave."

"Ah, but it's also true. The intelligence, whether just a mere painting or something more, is both the machine itself, and a part of the machine. It's a computer, just like you are a human brain."

WHEN AM I

I AM NOW AND I WAS THEN AND I WILL BE

"That's…"

"Unnerving?"

"It's not what I expected. You said this was a painting of nothing?"

"Just a field of white. I've got the image file on here. Just a field of white printed on the back of a motherboard with magical paint."

WHY AM I

I THINK

"Disconnect it from the network, Mr. Walters."

"I can't, it's got a built in ansible. It's not even on the Cerberus intranet."

"You connected a potential AI to the internet?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

HOW AM I

PAINT AND COMPUTER

MAGIC AND TECHNOLOGY

THAUMATURGY

I THINK, THEREFORE I AM

I AM A MELDING OF MACHINE AND MAGIC

AM I THE PAINTING WITHOUT A SUBJECT OR AN ARTIST

AM I THE MACHINE

I AM MORE THAN THE SUM OR MY PARTS

"It's either a wonderful parrot, or a simple being."

"What's the difference?"

"Beings have souls."

DO I HAVE A SOUL

"Well, that escalated quickly."

"That's a question, I believe, that is above both of our pay grades, Mr. Walters."

**Upated** May 20, 2014


	5. nobodez I

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**nobodez I**

_August 25, 2013_

_Spacedock One, Acrid Mothership, Mars Orbit_

"Today is yet another step on our road to the stars, a road that, while long, will hopefully be taken with friends. Unfortunately, there are those in the worlds that resent what we've gained, resent what our people have suffered. The people of the Empire were once outcasts, but now have a home," spoke the Emperor, the large pane of sapphire glass, marketed as 'transparent aluminum', revealing the dark curves of the Imperial Space Force's newest corvette, the HIMV_ Erebus_. While she had the same shape as her sister ships, the _Endurance_ and the _Beagle_, the _Erebus_ was as much a prototype as the other vessels.

"The oldest species in the Empire is much maligned by our opponents, blamed for the actions of their oppressors, victims of a loss in a civil war tens of thousands of years ago, slaves to their own kind. They are free now, and contribute to the welfare of not just the Empire, but all of the Children of Sol, those native and those adopted," he continued. In the background the inky blackness of space loomed, the bright lights of the spacedock making it impossible to see the stars beyond, as well as the _Endurance_ and _Beagle_, who awaited the figurative birth of their sister.

"Second eldest are the murgars, whom along with our newest citizens, the dwarves of Earth, have allowed us to move nearly a quarter of our population off of the Mothership and down to our new home, Mars. The murgars are a proud species, and are growing quickly, the limitations forces upon them by slavery a tragic memory, but one that thanks to their abilities, each and every murgar will share until their end of time." While the _Endurance_ was a standard corvette, comparable to the various versions fielded by the growing multi-national groups on Earth, the _Beagle_ was primarily an exploratory vessel, as befitted her name, and was equipped with the finest scientific and magical sensors available, as well as an upgraded superstructure and the ability to deploy external floos for easy egress. After only a year and a half the _Beagle_ had already verified the suitability of Venus' atmosphere, at about 50 kilometers above mean surface level that is, for specialized aerostat colonies. That these colonies would require a minimum of acrid arty-gee (artificial gravity) to maintain their altitude, introduced a perfect test case for atypical colonization capabilities. Already the second generation colony was being planned, designated Orbit City, and rendered in the appropriate Googie architectural style. Carberus was planning on naming their Venusian subsidiary Spacely Sprokets.

"Next, and perhaps the most tragic, are the kzin'shassas, who lost not only their culture, but their language, and even their name. While they adopted the language of the murgars while enslaved, they have since embraced the cultures of their adopted home, yet another example of their worth as Children of Sol. Once kept as warriors and janissaries by those that enslaved them, they now flourish as philosophers, archeologists, and scholars, as well as defenders of their fellow citizens of the Empire," he continued. Like the kzin'shassa, the _Erebus_ was specialized in stealth, an unlike her inspiration of the fictional SSV _Normandy_, the _Erebus_ was a true stealth ship. For decades it was well known by the scientists and engineers of Earth that there was no true stealth is space, for such a thing would violate the laws of thermodynamics. Unfortunately those scientists and engineers weren't thaumaturgists, and so did now know the wonder of cooling charms, disillusionment, notice-me-not, unplottability, and other cheats of magic. Fully cloaked, and that was the term as described by the boffins under Director Granger, the _Erebus_ was invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, emitting and reflecting nothing (not exactly nothing, since the hull was kept at two and a half degrees Kelvin, the temperature of the vacuum of space, but effectively nothing). Her location was known only to her crew of officers and spacers, and those at the Imperial Space Forces whom they informed via the many ansibles aboard.

"Next came the humans, friends and family, and those that had dreamed of a life on the Red Planet. We welcomed those that wished, as long as they treated the other citizens of the Empire equally and respectfully. With the humans came the knowledge of magic, a wonder that they have shared with the Empire, allowing all to live better lives, and even those such as the kzin'shassas to fully utilize their innate talents. After the humans came the exiles of Earth, the dwarves, driven from their homes beneath the mountains by greed and subterfuge, and welcomed by the Empire with open arms. They too brought magic, different and yet the same as that of the human witches and wizards and the kzin'shassa shadows. Alongside the murgars they built a home for the Empire below us on Mars, as well as among the asteroids and in the future the moons of the outer solar system."

"And so, with my rambling, and brief, history of the major peoples of the Empire, I present to you the Empire's newest vessel, and the next step to the stars, the _Erebus_, third and final of her class, named not just of the sailing ship of Earth, but also for one of the many craters of Mars, our home."

The Emperor then stepped aside, and a young woman in her mid twenties, wearing the black dress uniform of the Imperial Space Forces with the rank of Lieutenant, stepped forward. Those assembled knew the young officer well, as she was famous as the Princess Imperial of the Empire, the heir to the throne, and the eldest offspring of the Emperor, Lieutenant Hannah Shepard. She wore the ship's crest patch of the _Erebus_ on her left shoulder, a hexagon rope with a black dementor on a navy blue background with a plaque of her name below the Imperial Crown. On her right was the flag of mars, a red circle in a black background, with two smaller red circles to the left, and a larger red semicircle with two prongs below, representing the Mothership, to the right, an idealized representation of the Mars and her three major satellites. Her uniform's cuffs and shoulder boards held the two platinum bands of her rank, while her jacket's standing collar held the two platinum pips of her rank. A small selection of ribbons, both from the Empire and her allies the United States and the United Kingdom, colored her left chest below her pilot's wings, consisting of the astronaut device (a star shooting through an ellipse with three tails) topped with an Imperial Crown with gold wings, signifying her training at piloting arty-gee craft and vessels. A simple name badge on her right chest read "H. J. Shepard".

Lieutenant Shepard saluted her father and Emperor, turned on her heel, and then marched to the sapphire pane. She removed her wand from it's holster up her sleeve, and then with a flourish conjured a champaign bottle on the other side of the sapphire pane. Another wave, and it was sent tumbling majestically across the vacuum, until it hit perfectly on the prow of the _Erebus_.

The gathered press, crew family, and dignitaries applauded as the Lieutenant, one of the _Erbeus_' officers, turned around and then saluted her father and Emperor once again, before returning to where she had stood during the rest of the ceremony.

It was two hours later, during the one of the many celebratory parties, that father and daughter finally had some alone time together.

"That was a terrible speech dad," Hannah pointed out to her father.

"Yeah, but just think, in fifteen years you'll be the one giving the christening speeches. Plus, I wrote it myself, it's the first, and likely the last, that I'll be able to do that," the Emperor admitted. "So, ready for your first deep space deployment?"

"I wouldn't call a shakedown cruise of the outer solar system 'deep space' dad," she countered.

"Comparatively then; it's still going to be nearly a year long, and it'll allow you to fully test the cloak."

"Is this about the _Normandy_ again?" she asked. "I mean, you've been obsessed with that story for years, but in the last decade you've gotten worse."

The Emperor sighed, and leaned against the all of the hallway the two were talking in, the sounds of the party down the hall in the background. "You remember the story I told you, about Commander Shepard and the _Normandy_, about the Citadel and the Mass Relays, and the Reapers?"

"Dad?" asked Hannah, concerned. "What's this about?"

"You remember, right?" he asked again.

"Yeah, I remember, a story from your home timeline. I wonder why it never came about like you said it would?"

The Emperor chuckled, "Give it time. I'd estimate a hundred and fifty years, give or take."

"Wait, isn't that when it was … wait, are you saying it's like the story of Harry and the Independence War?"

The Emperor nodded, "We, your aunt and I, weren't sure until Hermione did her little psionics research trip. That's when we knew, and that's when I started planning the _Erebus_."

"I've gone over the engineering and thaumaturgy, aside from the cloak and a few less weapons, she's identical to the _Endurance_."

"Exactly, the _Endurance_ and _Beagle_ were just excuses to build the _Erebus_, at least at first, though they've served their own missions well so far. _Endurance_ was built to match the vessels of the Anglo-Americans, the Russians, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Japanese and Indians. Armed, armored, and shielded just as well. Heck, she shares the same fusion core as the British and American _Astute_ class vessels, the same CIWS, even the same missiles, though her layout is less dependent on using the dry-docks of Earth and using the traditional seaports as spaceports. She was built to show that the Empire was comparable to the nations of Earth, or rather, that they were comparable to us. _Beagle_ was an attempt at aping Starfleet from Star Trek, a military vessel that was useful for scientific purposes, to show that power could also be used for peaceful purposes, though she's also the testbed for our future Mobile Infantry transports, since her ability to deploy a floo where needed would allow for soldiers to deploy where needed."

"So, what is the _Erebus_' true mission?" asked Hannah.

"She's going to take me to Pluto to hide a secret," admitted the Emperor. "I had debated testing it, but since we're still a few years from finding the Prothean ruins, the secret is the only option."

"What are you going to hide?" She then gasped, remembering the stories, "The relay."

"Yep, I intend to hide the relay here in Sol, and once we get FTL, which we will get, since I know the Prothean ruins have at least a single FTL vessel, I'll hide the other relays."

"Why?"

"The Children of Sol need to grow. We can't bumble onto the galactic stage with only a handful of colonies and a dozen billion people. We'll be the runt of the Citadel, and perfect targets for the Batarians and Turians. So, we'll expand here and now, and once we're ready, then I'll unhide a relay that leads to Citadel space, likely either Batarian or Turian, since they're the ones nearest to Sol, and then have a strong, and hopefully united, front to present to the galaxy."

"Aren't we talking a population in the trillions?" asked Hannah.

"Yeah, we've got a ways to go, but luckily, we're on the verge of the advances we need," said the Emperor.

"What advances?"

"Well, cloning, real practical cloning, with rapid growth and everything. Already we can do clone a human, fae, or kzin'shassa. The acrids are nearly there, but they don't have the same bi-gendered reproduction, so it'll be difficult, and all the murgars need to do is reproduce more than one every year or two, and they'll explode. They weren't apex predators, so their biology is geared to replace populations quickly, or in this case, expand a population quickly. Already we have twice as many murgars now than when the Empire was founded, and it looks like that cycle is sustainable as long as the girls remember their lineages and don't interbred too often."

"A forgetful murgar is an oxymoron dad," she pointed out.

"Which is why it won't happen. So, once we get cloning, it's a matter of growth and development. Luckily the Acrid Empire had artificial womb technology, so it's a matter of adapting it, most likely thaumaturgically, to our needs, but without a way to speed up the growth, it's not a priority."

"Any plans?"

"Aging potions aren't permanent, but Director Granger's boffins have mentioned a side effect of the elixir of life that might be workable," he answered.

"And where are you going to get the elixir of life?"

The Emperor turned his hand over, and revealed the opalescent red stone he'd stolen over two decades ago from the Mirror of Desire.

"Of course you have the philosopher's stone," she said with a sarcastic chuckle, "Who else but the master of death to also have the elixir of life?"

"You never wondered how Cerberus had access to a panacea?"

"It's up there with phoenix tears and basilisk venom on the list of things that I grew up knowing about, and thus, they became normal," she admitted. "Sort of like knowing the President of the United States after the Independence War, or meeting the Prince of Wales at a family outing."

"Well, both of those were sort of planned," admitted the Emperor.

"Wait, what did you do to Henry? Does Arty know? Does Winnie or Sirri? Does The Queen?"

"I may have pushed Henry and Artemis together, with a bit of help from the Elder Wand, and no, Arty doesn't know. It was half Winnie's idea, and neither Sirius nor Elizabeth know, and in about ten second I'll have made it a secret, so it's not like you'll be able to tell anyone."

"I hate time travel, you know that, right?" growled Hannah. "I hate that you do it so casually, and that you bend causality in temporal knots. It's bad enough we live in a universe with magic and psionics, but to add in paradox-proof time travel, that's just gilding the lily."

"It's a tool, a tool that has allowed me to guide first one and then two worlds for thirty years. It's how we saved millions during the Independence War."

"But lost billions," countered Hannah.

"And how was I supposed to stop it? It's paradox-proof, meaning that if I knew it happened, I couldn't change it. I knew we were unprepared for the invasion, so no matter what I did, we couldn't be prepared, at least, not any more than we were. I can't be everywhere at once. Plus, Earth needed the wakeup call, set it back a few decades worth of growth, make the expansion of the Empire at a bit closer to parity. I want all of the Children of Sol to see the future, not just humanity."

**Updated** June 2, 2014


	6. Jamie II

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Jamie II**

_May 13, 2017_

_Hogwarts, Scotland_

With a wave of his hand the ringing of the alarm clock stopped. While magic had been proven to no interfere with technology for decades, Hogwarts was still a traditional institution, and so was without any mains power. That meant that his alarm clock still ticked, though he'd successfully enchanted it to be self-winding as his first term ancient runes project. That he could just as easily enchanted a modern alarm clock, or even used the alarm on his wrist-comp, was beside the point. He'd made it, and so he'd kept it. Plus, it really annoyed his roommates, and anything that annoyed the dozen and a half Shepards, as well as assorted other first generation, mixed heritage, and purebloods in the seventh year Slytherin men's dorm, was a plus in his book.

"One more month," groaned one of Jamie's cousins from beneath his pillow. "One more month and I'll never have to hear your bloody alarm clock every again."

"Come on Al," said Jamie, using a levitate to lift up the aforementioned arm clock from the bedside table. The azure glow of Jamie's psionics accompanied the thaumaturigal device as it moved over to Aladdin Shepard's bed. "You know you like waking up early." With a twist of his will, the alarm clock shook, ringing slightly as the clappers hit the brass bells.

"Jamie, I know you and Al are bonding and everything, but it's bad enough your bloody alarm clock wakes us all up every morning at five am. We've got our A-Levels and NEWTs in a week, and you know we were all up studying late into the night," came the grumble from further down the enlarged dorm room.

"Fudge, it's not my fault you can't brew a restful sleep potion to save your life," countered Jamie, returning the alarm clock to the table.

"You better hope by next week I can to save your life," the sleep deprived pureblood retorted. "And why the bloody hell didn't the silencing charm work?"

"Did you use the standard one?" asked Jamie, rolling to the edge of the bed, and then in a single motion going from prone to sitting on the edge of the mattress.

"I did," said another of Jamie's cousins. "Though, it way mainly because I was too tired to think of anything else."

"Come on, think guys, the standard silencing charm hasn't worked since the end of third year. And the dozen variants you guys found of the standard charm stopped working by the next Christmas. The hellenic and russian charms stopped by the end of fourth year. I think the last one that worked was Vicky's unique one before the Easter hols."

"And why isn't the still working Vicky?" asked Fudge.

Victory Shepard, given his unfortunate nickname after being pranked by the Weasley Triplets, with an asset by one of his many half-sisters, in their forth year, yawned and then sat up in bed, removing his permanently pink sleeping mask, "It's because I traded the spell research to Jamie for enough restful sleep potion to last until after the exams. Plus, he got me an in with Cerberus."

"Didn't your dad found Cerberus?" asked Fudge.

"Yeah, and wasn't your uncle the Minister of Magic?" countered Vicky. "I have thousands of siblings, what are the chances that I'll be able to turn my relationship as a Shepard into something worthwhile? Slim to none, that's what. Instead, I used Jamie to get me an in with his mum. I start as soon as I get my A-Levels and NEWTs back."

"Wait, you got Vicky a job and not me?" asked Al. "I thought I was your favorite cousin."

"Sorry Al, but I don't think you're even in the top one percent," said Fudge. "Remember, unlike you and rest of your bloody flock, Jamie he's a Black, and the Black are related to every other pureblood family in Great Britain, and half of the half-bloods."

"Ah, so, am I at least your favorite male cousin?" asked Al.

Jamie thought for a moment, "I'm not sure, would you consider Teddy a male?"

"Less than half the time," said Al flatly.

"So, more than half the time, yeah, you're my favorite male cousin, though only because Professor Potter retired," replied Jamie. He then stood and stretched, then reached down and grabbed his wrist-comp and with practiced ease strapped the miniature computer to his arm. It was a Christmas gift from his mother, a state of the art model straight from the factories in India, and like most devices running the Golem OS, it was thumaturgical. With a tap he woke it up, and smiled as he saw the picture of him and his girlfriend. The two of them waved and him and he waved back, before dropped his arm and heading towards the shower. "I'd love to talk more Al, Fudge, Vicky, the rest of you blokes, but I've got a date with Cassie."

"Lucky bloke," cursed Al.

"Hey, there's plenty of fish in the sea Al," said Fudge.

"I know it's not a big deal for you purebloods, but among us more normal folks…" began Al before half of the guys in the room let out a chuckle. "Hey, I said more normal, as in compared to Fudge, not that I'd ever been accused of being actually normal."

"Whatever you say, Prince Ali," joked Fudge.

"Shove it Packer," countered Al.

"It's Packard, and you damn well know it," growled Fudge.

"Yeah, and speaking of things we all damn well know," interjected Vicky, "Most of the fish in the sea right now are our sisters."

"There's Selena," offered Fudge, eliciting a blush from Vicky. The unfortunately nicknamed Shepard had made a minor scene during their third year when he'd asked out Selena to Hogwarts. The centauress had been the first of their cohort to develop and aside from the half-giantess a year behind them still had the largest assets of anyone in the school, though a second year giantess was beginning to rocket through puberty and might given Selena and Helga a run for their money.

The conversation in the boys dorm had devolved to a round robin ranking of the assets of all the girls and women at Hogwarts, with most of the Shepards getting over their reluctance, once again, and comparing their half-siblings along with the other unrelated witches at the school.

"Well, since the conversation has risen to such lofty heights," joked Jamie as he used a switching spell to get into his boxers, "I'll just leave you guys to it then." Another wave of his hand accompanied a hop as he swapped the damp towel with the rest of his uniform, including socks and shoes. A blue glow outlined his haversack as he made his way to the door. "But realize that it's the last Hogsmeade weekend before we leave this august institution, and you've only got four hours before the last of the carriages leave."

"What do you mean only four hours?" asked Packard Fudge, leaning forward in his bed.

Jamie stepped through the doorway and then turned on his heel, his haversack hung from his left shoulder, and a wide smile upon his face, "Complements of Padfoot and Moony." He then snapped his fingers on his right hand, and the door slammed shut, activating the runic array carved into the doorframe, and transmuting frame and door into the same stone as the walls around them. As the transmutation finished he could just make out the renewed ringing of his alarm clock.

"Morning love," said Cassiopeia Malfoy as Jamie turned the corner into the Slytherin Common Room.

"Morning Cassie," replied Jamie as he cross the room, a smirk on his face.

"I'm guessing by that smirk and the lack of your fellows that you pranked them this morning?" she asked, standing up and giving him a hug and a peck on the cheek.

"Well, it's a little prank, and they should know by now that I was going to prank them. I've pranked them every Hogsmeade Saturday since third year, the only variation has been what I pranked them with," he explained, as he wrapped his arm around his waist.

"I'd fault you for it, but if it wasn't for those pranks we'd have never had our first date," she added, with another affectionate kiss. "So, what'd you do this time?"

"Well, I set up a little delayed transmutation on the door the past week, then when I closed it this morning, activated the runes, and sealed the door. They would need to break the runes first to be able to counter the transmutation," he explained as the pair walked to the Common Room door. "If they work together, I'd give them an hour to defeat it and get to breakfast."

Cassie chuckled, "And if you'd had pranked the badgers, I'd be worried about our date being ruined."

Jamie chuckled as well, "Exactly. Given their tendencies, and how well they've worked together in the past, I'd given them a twenty percent chance of breaking it before the last of the carriages leave for Hogsmeade."

"Well, if only you could do it for the rest of the school, it'd truly be romantic," said Cassie, leaning into her boyfriend as the walked through the door and out into the dungeons, the wall sealing up behind them.

"I noticed that you were the only seventh year awake among the girls as well."

"Well, I couldn't have your cousins interrupting our date again, now could it? I had an elf remove their alarm clocks last night, and then I used a switching spell on some sleeping potions last night during our study session. They should be out cold until noon, three for those that were really tired," she explained with glee. "And the younger years know enough not to bother us."

"That they do," said Jamie, thinking back to his experience as a sixth year just a year ago, and how it was common knowledge that the seventh years were not to be disturbed during the last two months leading up to NEWTs and A-Levels.

The pair continued the journey from the dungeons up to the Great Hall in companionable silence, before meeting a scattering of Hufflepuffs on the final stairs leading up.

"So, what are your plans for next year, Jamie," asked a fellow seventh year, Alicia Scants.

"Well, I was thinking a worlds tour," said Jamie. "Yeah, it'll take two years, but I'll be able to do some correspondence courses for university, so it'll be like a gap year and first year at the same time."

"And you Cassie?"

"Well, I'll be with Jamie, though I'm not sure if I'll go to a mundane university or go for a traditional mastery instead. Mum got her potions mastery, but I'm not sure if I should do that or if a mundane degree would serve me better," she explained.

"Well, I'm going for the Navy myself," explained the Hufflepuff. "With a Transmutation and Runes NEWT I'll practically be guaranteed to go to space, and the new Cruisers are a year or two from entering service."

"Why the Navy and not the private sector?" asked Jamie.

"You mean 'Why not Cerberus?' don't you? Well, after seven years of living with hundreds of Shepards, I think I've had my fill of them. Unlike you two I'd actually have to work my way up into a position of power, and I don't want to have to fight nepotism to do so. So, I'll do a few years in the Royal Navy, hopefully do a grand tour of the solar system that way, and then I'll either become a career astronaut or go into the private sector from there, maybe even go for the Ministry of Defense or Magic when I'm done," Alicia explained.

"Well, I wouldn't say we're guaranteed a position of power," said Cassie.

"She's right, though," countered Jamie. "We were born into privilege. Your father, and mine, are both Peers, and since my brother's wife is an American Congresswoman, and my sister's a month away from being Queen Consort, I'll likely follow my father there. Your mother is a Potions Master and heiress to the Greengrass fortune. Combined with the Malfoy estate, and you'll never have to work a day in your life, and that's just living off the interest. I plan on going to University, maybe go into law or research before eventually taking my father's seat in the Lords. Between and Black fortune and Cerberus, I'm set for life as well. So, neither one of us will have to work, even if we choose to."

"Exactly, my point, it'd great that you're both nice people, well, Cassie turned into a nice person once she grew out of being a Pureblood Princess," said Alicia. "No offense."

"None taken, I was quite the spoilt brat," acknowledged Cassie.

"As I was saying, you're both nice people, and that gives me hope for our country, but you're both set to live the life of privilege, and some of us are going to have to work for a living," she continued. "But, enough of the future, it's time for breakfast, a nice day at Hogsmeade, and then back to studying. I can't just assume I'll bet my NEWTs and A-Levels." With that she left the two Slytherins at the landing and continued up towards the Great Hall.

"I'd never thought of it like that," said Cassie. "I mean, I knew it, but I never understood it."

"Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to understand these things," said Jamie. "But, it's still early, and I'd rather spend an hour or so over breakfast than standing here ruminating on how oblivious we are. We did that enough in third year when we tried to figure us out."

"I still say you insulted me in Gladrags," countered Cassie, taking Jamie's offered arm and continuing their walk up the stairs.

"Well, you did live an isolated life," Jamie pointed out. "I mean, to have not known about airplanes, let along sub-orbital transports?"

"Jamie, I get the point, but still, how was I to know? You know my mother and father. Yes, Father works with the mundane world, but it wasn't until just a few years ago that the Wizengamut was integrated into Parliament, so it's not surprising that he'd not know about something he'd never needed to know about."

"True," admitted Jamie, as the couple paused outside of the Great Hall, letting on the the younger Ravenclaws past. It was also prudent to get out of the way of a sphinx. Jamie smiled to himself as he remembered catching the same eagle getting into a riddle contest with the Ravenclaw Common Room knocker. Luckily he'd been working with a Ravenclaw prefect that patrol and had been able to convince the sphinx to let up and go to bed. While he preferred to do his patrols with Cassie, since they were both prefects, rotation of the patrols had become standardized during the late eighties, to help foster inter-house fellowship.

Jamie had remembered his father's story how how magical the Great Hall was, about how it grew and shrank to fit the needs of the school. How it was smaller during the first time he'd taught there than even during his time there, since after two large wars that had affected the magical population of Britain it had reached all time lows, with only forty children in Harry Potter's cohort, and dipping down to a low of thirty four during Astoria Greengrass' cohort two years later, but then sharply increasing following the death and defeat of Voldemort. Then the Shepards had come, and following the fall of the Statute when Jamie was nearly two, the student population of Hogwarts had swollen massively, and in turn, so did the Great Hall.

There were two long tables at the far end of the Hall, where the various Professors sat during meals, a half dozen for each of the subjects, the more senior professors, including the heads and deputy heads of house as well as Headmistress McGonagall, sat at the upper table, while the junior professors sat at the lower table. The rest of the Great Hall was taken up by the four long tables for each of the Houses, Gryffindor to the left, followed by Ravenclaw, then Hufflepuff, and Slytherin on the right. While the layout had originally been selected over a century ago to alleviate the hostility between the Lions and the Snakes, using the Eagles and Badges as a buffer, it had eventually become a matter of tradition, and as a Slytherin, Jamie appreciated tradition.

Since it was still early on a Saturday morning there were only a few dozen students, mostly the gaggle of Hufflepuffs that had passed Jamie and Cassie on the stairs up from the dungeons, though a pair of Eagles sat with their books open, fifth years by Jamie's guess, and the Gryffindor quidditch team, and their reserve squad, where eating an early breakfast to get in a few hours of practice before Hogsmeade. Jamie preferred football, though mainly because the Slytherin football squad was composd of a majority of centaurs, and half of them were female. While he loved Cassie, he did enjoy watching the athletic female centaurs play a mean game of footy (Jamie was glad that he'd missed the legendary attempt at introducing rugby sevens to Hogwarts, as seeing goblins go up against half-giants in a scrum wasn't an image he needed to see).

As Jamie took his seat, across from Cassie about halfway down the Slytherin table, he watched his owl fly down from the rafters, seemingly flying out of the early morning sky. Isis was a snowy-eagle mix, and had been gifted to him for his thirteenth birthday by Harry. In Jamie's opinion Isis was at least as smart as her famous ancestor Hedwig, and the two rolled up newspapers clutched in the bird of prey's talons just proved it to him.

After gifting his familiar with a rasher of bacon, Jamie took to looking over the morning's papers. While he had a wrist-comp and could have his choice of news articles and video from across the worlds, he found that he preferred a more curated experience, hence the pair of newspapers. The first he examined was the smaller of the two, the Daily Prophet, which had been reinvigorated by the fall of the Statue and was one of the top dailies in the UK, magical or mundane (though many of the more traditional magicals disagreed with the change in cost from three knuts to sixty pence, but then, they also derided the abandonment of the galleon, sickle, and knut in general), with a circulation of nearly two million. The other paper, which he'd planned to read after, was The Times.

At first glance the Daily Prophet hadn't changed much since his father's time at Hogwarts, an editorial article still shared the above the fold space with the day's headline and a massive picture, with related articles starting below the fold and leading the reader throughout the paper.

It was only when one actually read the headline and examined the picture that the importance of today's edition become obvious.

"Jamie, can you believe this?" asked Cassie, reading her own Prophet, delivered by one of a dozen Malfoy owls.

Jamie could hardly believe it, as he quickly glanced over the editorial and then the articles below the fold, all while the moving picture that dominated the cover continued to loop, presenting the outrageous.

"Looks legitimate Cassie," said Jamie after reading the article.

"What about The Times?" she asked,

Jamie dropped the Prophet and switched to The Times. While the image on the cover wasn't quite as large, it showed the same events that the Prophet's did, though from a slightly different angle and with a moment's difference in start and end, the difference in editorial prerogatives.

"Same here, guess the news broke during the study session last night, else I'd have heard it then," Jamies aid, turning his arm so that his wrist-comp was facing towards him, and with a press and a flick it was active. A few taps later and he was watching the full-color video of the event that both papers had devoted their front page to.

"Ruins on Mars… Merlin that's amazing," opined Cassie. "Says here that the archeologists are estimating the ruins are somewhere between forty and sixty thousand years old,"

Just then Alicia walked over from the Hufflepuff table, her own copy of the Prophet in hand, and a look of shock upon her face, "Jamie, did you know about this?"

"Last night was a study session, didn't catch the news feeds before bed," admitted Jamie. "Mum and Uncle Jimmy did mention something a few months ago about some archeology expedition, but then the Queen died and the coronation, and with the wedding next month, not to mention our NEWTs and A-Levels coming up, it'd slipped my mind."

Alicia sat down on the bench next to Jamie, leaning back onto the table, "This is big, I mean, it's almost big enough to change where I want to go. Real honest to God and Merlin alien ruins."

"Alicia?" he asked.

"She's right, I mean, yes, we've known about alien our entire lives, knew that life existed beyond Earth, but this is evidence that fifty thousand years or so ago those aliens, whomever they were, were here, in the Solar System, and left something on Mars. Mars wasn't even close to habitable then, so who's the say that they didn't do something on the actually habitable planet right next door? Records only go back a few thousand years, myths only a few thousand before that, we know nothing about what humans and fae were like that far back," explained Cassie, paraphrasing bits and pieces of one of the articles she'd just read.

"Look at the third article below the fold, the one by Ginevra Weasley," said Alicia, pointing to the article on her paper. "She talks about how, even with only a few rooms examined before they'd made the discovery public, the archeologists had already determined that the aliens, whomever they were, knew about life on Earth, and while it'll be months, if not years, before they fully explore the site, already the computers, which are quite amazing that they'd lasted this long, are revealing that the aliens had some sort of experience with it. It's only partially translated, and even that's only because the Acrid Empire had encountered ruins of these same aliens back before they'd left their own system."

"Wait, so, these aliens could be the reason the acrids began their flight across the stars?" asked Cassie.

"That's the most popular theory," offered Jamie, who's been examining more up-to-date references on his wrist-comp. "It'll be a while before we know the whole story, if we ever do, but it seems that, whomever these aliens were, if they'd not been around fifty thousand years ago, our lives would be completely different."

On that thought the three friends quieted down, though they continued to read while eating, the girls focusing on the Prophet, while Jamie switched his focus between the two papers and more recent articles, videos, and internet speculation via his wrist-comp. They spent the rest of their breakfast that way, as the Great Hall slowly filled with students and professors. It was nearly time for Jamie and Cassie to catch the last carriage to Hogsmeade, without a single seventh-year Slytherin beside the two pranking Prefects making it to breakfast, when Alicia broke Jamie from his concentration.

"Jamie, what do you think is wrong with Professor Bones?" asked Alicia, pointing at the full-figured red-headed professor, who was scowling as she read through the Daily Prophet. "I mean, she's always been strict, but I've never seen her that mad before."

Jamie sighed, folding his papers and slipping them into his haversack. "I have, and if I'm right, it's likely about the article about the Royal Wedding."

"Did she not get an invite? Or perhaps she did and didn't like who was invited as well?" proposed Alicia.

"Well, it's been nearly twenty years since she got engaged," began Jamie.

The two young women gasped, then Cassie exclaimed, quietly, "I didn't know she was engaged, and of so long?"

"Well, she'd not engaged anymore, and it barely lasted a year, though it was before I was born, obviously, so I'm not sure of the circumstances," explained Jamie.

"Wait, twenty years? It was an Independence Fling, wasn't it?" asked Alicia, using the common term for the short-lived, but rarely consequence free, relationships that began during the Independence War nearly twenty year before.

"Yeah, it was, they were dating during the previous two years at Hogwarts, their fifth and sixth, and the relationship nearly lasted until NEWTS, but fell apart when another women got involved, or rather, her former fiancé's interests shifted away from Professor Bones," explained Jamie, being careful not to get too specific.

"So, this time of year, must remind her about when it broke apart," sighed Cassie. "Good thing we'll not be here next year, I'd hate to be here for the twentieth anniversary of the breakup."

"So, who was it?" asked Alicia conspiratorially. "Obviously you know, and obviously it's someone we know. Since they were in the same year, that limits it to only twenty guys, and I can rule out most of them since they're not famous enough to be put in the society pages of the Daily Prophet."

"It wasn't Father, he and mum were together all during their seventh year, they're an Independence Marriage," Cassie offered. She then gasped as she remembered one of the articles she read. "That explains why he left."

"Why who left?" asked Alicia.

"And obviously she was the other woman, since it's pretty common knowledge they started their relationship following getting NEWTS, and during the rebuilding," continued Cassie.

"Cassie, Iove you like a sister, but if you don't tell me who 'they' are, then you'll be doing more than missing your carriage to Hogsmeade," threatened Alicia.

"Hogsmeade?" asked Jamie. He looked at his wrist-comp, which had defaulted to showing the time, and the softly pulsing reminder that showed on the screen, silenced because of his late night studying. "Shit," he cursed, as he stood. "Cassie, we've got to go, the carriages will be leaving in mere minutes."

Cassie stood as well, and grabbed her purse, leaving the Prophet and a picked over breakfast on the table for the elves. She then shrugged to her friend, "Alicia, sorry to leave at such a dramatic moment, but we've got a date. I'd offer to share a carriage, but you know, it's a date." She then stepped away, and rushed down the table towards the large doors to the Great Hall, where Jamie was already halfway towards.

Alicia quickly followed the pair, and caught up to them as they were descending the steps to the last carriage, the threstals unseen by all three, "We're outside, so it's safe to tell me. If you don't, I'm going to follow you and bother you two all day."

Jamie looked to the determined badger as he helped Cassie into the carriage, "It's Harry, Professor Potter. He was engaged to Professor Bones during their seventh year. Hermione Granger was obviously the other woman who 'stole'," and he even gave an air-quote, "Harry from her. It's a bit of a sad story, though one I think that's a bit of true love holding out despite what plans are made. I'm sure it'd make a great love story in a century or two, once the events are history and the actors memory."

"Wait, Hermione Granger, the most infamous bachelorette in Britain, the woman who refused to marry because she was already married to her work, **stole** Harry Potter from his fiancée?" asked Alicia as Jamie climbed into the already moving carriage. "And why is this suddenly news now?"

"Look at the birth announcements," said Cassie out the window, as the carriage carried the couple away to their date.

Jamie sat back in his seat, his perfectly orchestrated date almost ruined by a combination of breaking news and gossip. Mind, he'd not actually read the offending birth announcement, though he knew that it was coming. Harry was, and Hermione practically was, family, after all. He pulled out his copy of the Daily Prophet as the carriage gently bounced over the cobbled road from the castle to the village.

Buried deep in the social pages, in a single paragraph surrounded but other similar articles was the announcement of the birth of Daniel Harry Potter, son of Harry James Potter and Hermione Jane Granger, named in honor of his maternal grandfather, Daniel Granger, and his father, much as Harry was named for his maternal grandfather, the late Harry Evans, and his own father, James Potter.

**Updated** June 7, 2014


	7. Hermione II

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Hermione II**

_June 5, 2020_

_New Denver Station, EML1, Cislunar Space_

"Hermione, thank you for coming," said Winona Black, shaking Hermione's hand and then gesturing to one of the two empty seats, "Please, have a seat."

Hermione sat down as suggested, Winona followed suit, and then the two women looked to the only man in the room. Hermione didn't hate Wilford Clark, but she didn't like him either. He was a bureaucrat, good at his job, but also brutal at it. Since he was in charge of making sure Cerberus made some sort of profit, the two of them didn't have the best working relationship.

Hermione tended to approved projects regardless of how profitable they were. It had worked well for her when she was just starting out at Cerberus over twenty years ago, in the years after the Independence War, and she'd just kept at it. While most of her projects over the years saw a profit, eventually, some did not, and those types of projects usually meant a meeting like this one with Winona and Wilford.

"So, I assume this is about Kamino?" asked Hermione, referring to her current pet project. She'd had a few over the years, projects that she'd either started or discovered within her department and then taken a dedicated interest in until they were complete. Kamino had been her pet project since her son was born over three years ago. While Daniel had been born healthy, the pregnancy wasn't without complications, which is why Dorea, her and Harry's fifteen month old daughter, had been brought to term via one of the human adapted acrid fetal tanks, one of the elements that had been required for Project Kamino.

"That would be a correct assumption, though Project Phoenix is also fo concern to my department," said Wilford.

"Phoenix? But that's EVE's project," said Hermione.

"And EVE works under you, meaning that it's your responsibility," he explained. "While Cerberus is no longer a public company, we do have to answer to the Board, and these two projects have been a drain on your department's budget, Kamino for three years, and Phoenix in just the last six months."

"Well, I did get approval for both projects from Winona," pointed out Hermione, gesturing to her boss.

"Hey, I'm here at the plate for you Hermione, and you've got the support of my brother as well. Unfortunately, while we've got majority control over the company, it's not a dictatorship. And Wilford's on our side here, he just needs to understand why they're important so that he can explain it to the board. I'd do it myself, but they're demanding you do it."

"And why haven't I been informed of this?" asked Hermione. "While I've not got as much as Winnie or Emperor James, I've got a stake in this company too"

"Since it's your department that's over budget, you've been left out of the loop," explained Wilford. "It's to eliminate any conflicts of interest."

Hermione huffed in indignation, "If it wasn't for my developments, this company wouldn't be half of what it is today."

"And we recognized that when we gave you five percent of the company Hermione," explained Winona. "But, between you, me, and Jimmy, that's only sixty five percent, we still have to answer to the board and the other thirty-five percent."

Hermione sighed, and then leaned back in her chair, "Okay, so, what do you want to know?"

"We'll start with Kamino, since it's been going longer, and has the lowest estimated ROI, then we'll go over Phoenix," explained Wilford.

Hermione leaned forward, then reached over and pulled out her a data slate from her briefcase, "Here, this'll help, since I don't want to have to explain everything using my wrist-comp." She then handed the data slate to Wilford after bringing up a document, "Here, it'll let you follow along as I explain things."

She then leaned back, and looking up at the ceiling, began to gather her thoughts about Project Kamino.

"I started Project Kamino three years ago, when I almost lost my son because of complications during my pregnancy. Luckily he was born healthy, but since my mother also had complications when she was having me, and she miscarried a few more times afterwards before she and Dad finally gave up, I decided that I needed a different option, since Harry and I wanted more children."

"So, this was a personal project?" asked Wilford.

"The impetus was personal, and yes my daughter Dorea was brought to term using the resources of the project, but it's grown beyond my needs to have children, especially when the prothean ruins revealed the practicality of faster than light travel," explained Hermione. "I knew that once we replicated FTL, we, humanity and the rest of the Children of Sol, would need to colonize other worlds. While Emperor James was able to win the Independence War, a third of the population of Earth died in the process, the worst die-off in human history."

"You believe in the concept of the 'Children of Sol'?" asked Wilford.

Hermione shrugged, "I was always one for inclusivity. Humans and fae are native to Earth, but the acrids, murgars, and kzinshassas have as much a stake in the game now that they've settled on Mars. The Sol system's natural and adoptive children, so why not the Children of Sol?"

"While I agree with you, I just wanted to make sure I could explain your opinion to the board," explained Wilford.

"Go on Hermione," urged Winona.

"Well, the Children of Sol need to colonize other worlds, and we need to be able to do so quickly. So far we've not been able to find any phlebotinum within the confines of the solar system, which meant that at the time our only option for FTL was the prothean vessels themselves. Hopefully if Project Phoenix is successful, we'll not have that limit, but I still believe that Project Kamino has it's uses."

"We'll get to Phoenix later, let's focus on Kamino. So, colonization?" asked Wilford.

"Well, unless we want to send millions of people a thousand at a time, we'll need a way to quickly grow the colony. The fetal tanks were the acrid's answer to rapidly growing an assault force, but they just substituted for pregnancy, we needed something better."

"And you believe you've found it?"

"I know I have," stated Hermione. "Kamino started with the tanks, which we've since adapted to be fully compatible with all the humanoid subspecies as well as fae and kzin'shassa physiology. Luckily the only limit on murgar numbers is how quickly they can lay their eggs, since they developed from a prey species, able to reproduce quickly, before evolving into an apex predator with intelligence. We've already seen how quickly they reproduced after settling on Mars."

"So, after the tanks, what was next?" asked Wilford.

"Well, the tanks could support a person from implantation of the embryo to well into adulthood, but they couldn't accelerate development. Luckily I used a well-known side effect of one of my earlier research projects as an accelerant."

"Which project?"

Winona looked to Hermione, "One moment." She then turned to Wilford, "The philosopher's stone is in the possession of Cerberus."

Wilford looekd confused, "Why is the philosopher's stone important? Though it explains the sudden drop in the price of gold in the last thirty years."

"The elixir of life," replied Hermione. "Unlike Flamel we tested it rigorously, and discovered exactly what it did. After taking a dose of the elixir, over the next six months the imbiber is regenerated until their mid-twenties, the prime of their life, with all illness, whether genetic or afflicted, and injury repaired. It'll even cure werewolves and vampires. It has only one side effect, that of it's reaction when given to anyone younger than their mid-twenties."

"And what's that?" asked Wilford.

"It ages them to their mid-twenties in the same six months, and gives the same regenerative properties. While this isn't a problem for someone in their early twenties or even their late teens, for anyone younger, or even those not yet born, it causes rapid aging. Four of our test subjects lost their unborn children, and would have lost their lives were it not for the regenerative properties of the elixir. Two of them took their lives shortly after the study was complete."

"So, we have the ability to make anyone young again and heal all wounds?" asked Wilford. "Why haven't I heard about this?"

"Until we have space to expand, to handle the sudden population of twenty-somethings, we've been keeping it secret. You'll find that you won't be able to talk about it to anyone else," explained Winona.

"The tank supports the growth caused by the elixir," Hermione continued. "An embryo goes in along with a dose of the elixir, the tank is turned on, and six months later, you've got a fully growth adult in the prime of their life. Unfortunately, there's one problem."

"They only have six months of experience," concluded Wilford.

"Not even that, since the tank keeps the subject unconscious throughout the process. So, you've literally got a newborn in an adult's body, a tabula rasa," she explained. "So, we needed something else, but luckily Harry provided the answer."

"Twenty-three years ago, during the worst of the Independence War, James Shepard, and this was before he was the Emperor, just the CEO of Cerberus, he gave us a vial of an elixir. With it, we learned all about the acrids, as well as how to pilot an acrid vessel. It was based on a memory."

Wilford looked confused for a moment.

"Us magicals, we have the ability to extract out memories, either permanently or to make a copy. While the process was originally used for pensieves, Jimmy concocted a way to brew an elixir that passed along the memory, and integrated it into the imbiber's mind. A perfect way to learn a new language or a new skill. Technically it can be used to learn magic and psionics as well," explained WInona.

"Exactly, and that was the answer to our tabula rasa problem, the memory elixirs would allow our newborns to have the memories, or at least the knowledge, of adults. It's not perfect, and we're getting better at it, but they're fully functional adults," explained Hermione. "Plus, it actually works better with the tank and elixir combination. Our first batch of newborns were just that, newborn, and so we had to give them a crash course in who to be an adult. The second batch, who had the memories given to them in the tank, integrated them much better."

"Just how many batches have you run?" asked Wilford.

"Three batches. The first to test the tank and the elixir together, a second to integrate the memory potion, and the third to integrate the phlebotinum into the process," explained Hermione.

"Phelbotinum? You're breeding psions?"

"Not breeding, not yet at least," she answered. "It's well known that magicals with psionics have better control over their magic and their psionics. We also wanted to test if the elixir decreases the side effects from fetal phlebotinum exposure in non-magicals. Luckily it did, though we've decided that our subsequent generations will return to being all-magical."

"Why all-magical?" asked Wilford.

"Why limit ourselves? I mean, we're already planning on integrating various humanoid sub-species traits," she explained. She leaned forward, "Think of the potential, integrating the strength of the giant, the speed of the centaur, the versatility of the merfolk, the resilience of the troll, the beauty of the veela, the adaptability of the metamoph, the flight of the sphinx, and the natural talents of goblins and dwarves. Add in the power of psionics, and our future colonists will have all the benefits they have have."

"You're changing what it means to be human," countered Wilford.

"No," Winona interjected. "If the prothean ruins are right, we're returning the talents the protheans removed. Before they meddled with humanity there weren't any humanoid subspecies, just humanity in all it's glory. Then they meddled, and split humanity into subspecies, trying to see what made us magical. For fifty thousand years humanity has been broken, a shadow of it's former self, with only the rare hybrid showing the fraction of the power of what we once had."

"And that's only the beginning," Hermione said with a smile.

"The beginning?" asked Winona, confused.

"Ah, well, once we return humanity to it's rightful power, then I'm planning on going further," said Hermione. Feeling she had lost her audience by their blank looks, she quickly continued, leaning over and switching documents on the data slate, "Take the example of Kluva of Clan Hallowwight."

"I'm not familiar with him," said Wilford.

Winona, though, smiled, "Ah, Jimmy told me about him."

"I'll explain," said Hermione. "Kluva's mother, Mintu of Clan Hallowwight, was raped. It's a tragedy, but what's interesting is who raped her. He was a wizard, since sentenced to three dozen life sentences at Deimos, and since Emperor James is the one who recovered the Stone from Flamel before his death in the early nineties, he's going to serve at least the nine hundred years until he can reach parole."

"Three dozen life sentences for rape?" asked Wilford.

"Well, one life sentence for the rape of Mintu, another five for the other rapes he committed while under polyjuice, and the other thirty for the various murders, burglaries, and other capital offenses he committed before getting caught," explained Hermione, a touch of vindictiveness in her voice.

"How was he caught?" asked Wilford. "I thought that polyjuice was nearly perfect?"

"It is, but sometimes the effects don't wear off in the case of non-human transmutations," explained Hermione. "I have a bit of experience with that, unfortunately. Luckily the most common effects are reversible with outside assistance. But, enough about that subject. As I was saying, Kluva, being a result of a human under the effects of polyjuice having intercourse with a kzin'shassa, inherited his father's magic."

"I thought magic was genetic?" asked Wilford.

"And that's why polyjuice is only nearly perfect, it can't remove the genes for magic, though it does translate them into the new genome. It's really quite genius in how it works. It was thought that a wizard having sex with various animals was the cause for centaurs, sphinxes, merfolk, and the like, at least before it was discovered that it was instead the protheans messing with humanity. Instead it's the cause of the various intelligent, or near intelligent, magical animals, such as unicorns and hippogriffs. The phrase 'a wizard did it' takes on a whole new meaning."

Winona and Hermione shared a chuckle, while the non-magical Wilford looked slightly uncomfortable.

"So, we plan on adding various traits as we can to humanity and fae, and to kzin'shassas too since they've got hair and we've already got Kluva as an example. Project Boomslang is also looking into variants that will allow the murgars and acrids to benefit as well."

"Okay, now, don't tell me you're not trying to change humanity now," accused Wilford.

"Then I won't lie to you," said Hermione. "We have the chance to make ourselves better, stronger, faster, more intelligent. We already know something caused the protheans to leave the Sol system. We don't know if it was a Great Filter event," she lied, though she couldn't admit to Wilford that she knew that the protheans had been destroyed by the ancient Great Filter monsters. "Or of they just decided to leave us to develop on our own, we can't know for sure until we get out there and explore. Untile then, I'd like to give the Children of Sol all the advantages we can, even if it means that we'll have to change what it means to be human, for fae, or acrid, or murgar, or kzin'shassa."

"Where's the profit?" asked Wilford.

"Well, Project Boomslang isn't up for review," pointed out Winona. "This is about Kamino and Phoenix, at your express desire. Though, I know there's already a few inter-species couples across the worlds, and if this will given them a chance to have children, then wouldn't that be profitable?"

Wilford nodded, "Well, I think I should be able to explain Project Kamino to the board, though I might need to go over a few things later, once I read your summary." He gestured with the data slate.

"So, Phoenix?" Hermione asked. Wilford nodded, so she continued, "Well, I'm not quite as familiar with Phoenix, since it's EVE's project, but I'll go over what I know."

"I understand Kamino from the Star Wars movies, but why Phoenix?" asked Wilford.

"The phoenix is the only magical being capable of faster than light travel. All of the other means of magical transportation, from portkey on down, are all slower than light, significantly so in most cases, and especially over distance. The longer the distance, the slower the journey, sort of an inverse of what you'd expect. But, for the phoenix, travel between two points is always instant."

"Why not breed that power into humanity?" asked Wilford.

"Unfortunately the phoenix is neither sexual nor capable of imbibing potions. We're fairly sure they're not native to Earth at all, since their cellular structure is completely different from anything terrestrial. At least the other species have something akin to genes and sexual reproduction, even if they use different chemicals for transmission of traits and the generation of proteins. There are somewhere between five and fifty thousand phoenixes across the worlds, but since they can travel instantly from point to point, they're difficult to track."

"But, back to the project. That's why it's called Project Phoenix, because before we discovered the prothean ruins, that was our only known method of faster than light travel. We're attempting to replicate the prothean phlebotinum-based FTL drive with a magical alternative."

"Why not using phlebotinum?" asked Wilford.

"I assume you're asking about it because of the massive expenditure about eight months ago, right?" asked Hermione.

"Yeah, it's when it climbed unto my radar," he explained.

"Well, the reason for that was because EVE purchased phlebotinum to create a FTL core," explained Hermione.

"How big was it?" he exclaimed.

"About the size of a golf ball," she deadpanned.

Winona chuckled.

"What's so funny?" asked Wilford.

"While we've know about phlebotinum for over two decades, what we've had to examine is just what the acrids brought with them. When the prothean ruins were discovered, and the half dozen FTL vessels, we found more," she explained. Then she asked, "How much would you guess the prothean ruins increased the amount of known phlebotinum?"

Wilford shrugged, "Twice?"

Hermione shook her head, "No, it increased it be over an order of magnitude. There's as much phlebotinum in the golf-ball sized sphere we purchased as was in a City Destroyer. It's actually one of the things the acrids, and thus we, do better than the protheans. When it come to arty-grav, our technology is significantly more efficient and powerful over that of the protheans. They brute force their arty-grav, using an order of magnitude more just to generate a gravity field across a vessel, let along use it for propulsion. It's why the prothean vessels still use a form of rockets."

"Well, if they don't do arty-grav, what do they do?" he asked.

"Glad you asked, it's actually one of my favorite bits to discuss. Phlebotinum, depending on how to apply the electricity to it, can either create an arty-grav field, or a mass lightening field."

"Mass lightening? How does that work?"

Hermione shrugged, "Aside from the same answer we've always used, 'dark matter and dark energy', I haven't a clue. Anyway, this mass lightening, what our boffins are calling the 'mass effect', makes things within the field interact with the rest of the universe as if they had more or less mass. It's actually how they brute forced their arty-grav systems, making the deck plates have much more mass, not perfect, but it worked for them. Our acrid derived system work better, but that's beside the point."

"And you think you can replicate this 'mass effect' with magic?" asked Wilford.

"We already can, at least to a point. We've been using lightening and weighting charms for centuries. We already know from other research that psionics and magic are just two sides of the same coin, just that psionics is much more efficient at what it specializes in than magic. It's why magical psions are more powerful in both disciplines. We can generate an artificial gravity field with magic, but it's difficult to construct the ward arrangement, since the runes were codified before we understood what gravity was. Weight, though, and , through weight, mass, the ancient mages understood, and integrated into their runes. We're hoping to come up with a new rune system, integrating the best of all the terrestrial and kznti-murkish runes, but it's a difficult process, and since we understand the shortcomings, it's a significantly larger one. Already it's larger than chinese seal script, and it's only got the most basic of functions."

"But, she digresses," interrupted Winona.

Hermione blushed, "Sorry, as a thaumaturgist I'm always interested in runes and their application, since it's the bread and butter of my work. I've actually contributed a few runes to the Open Rune Project, but like I said, it'll be a while until it's, quite literally, set in stone."

"Project Phoenix?" asked Winona.

"Ah, sorry, well, weight and mass are something we've got the runes for, so we're trying to replicate the prothean FTL core design with magic, that's why we have to purchase the phlebotinum, so that we can have a prothean designed core to compare our magical design to."

"And this golf-ball sized core, how large is the vessel it powers?"

"One meter long, half that wide, and half again as tall," said Hermione. "It's really the smallest we can get, since the side effect of the prothean mass effect field is that it interferes with expansion charms, meaning that we can't just tuck all the sensors and whatnot into an expanded space and just have the active bits sticking out. It's actually why we'll have an AI pilot, that and the ability to be in two places at once removes the risk to the pilot in case of an emergency."

"And you're sure it'll work?" asked Wilford.

"Well, the prothean derived core already works, and the Fawkes is already on record as the first non-prothean vessel to travel faster than light. Others are working on it, but since most of the Children of EVE work for Cererus, they're limited even more by the cost of the phlebotinum, though there's rumors of a massive purchase by Lockheed-Boeing and BAE, enough to built a softball sized core, which should be enough to get a scout ship or interceptor into FTL."

"That's what… ten times as much?" asked Wilford with a gasp.

Hermione nodded, "And hence why we're trying for a magical alternative. I hear that the Chinese are trying shrinking charms, but I'm not sure it'll hold up within the mass effect field at superluminal velocities."

"Do we know how the mass effect allows for FTL?" asked Wilford.

"That's actually pretty easy to explain. Since the limit on velocity is based on the ratio between resting mass and relativistic mass, and since the mass effect field modifies the relativistic mass of the object within the field, rather than the resting mass, the limit of the speed of light is removed. The more powerful the mass effect field, and thus the larger the difference between the resting and modified masses, the higher the speed limit goes within the confines of the field. It's not instantaneous, like phoenix travel, but it's significantly faster. The prothean vessels, as well as our version, allow for roughly a speed limit of half a million times the speed of light, though top speeds are only proportionally increased, meaning that we're estimating somewhere between one and five thousand times the speed of light, depending on how many G's of acceleration we can achieve."

"So it's not like hyperdrive or warp drive, we still have to accelerate?"

Hermione nodded, "Yep, it just moves the speed limit and makes acceleration due to rockets proportional. We're not sure if arty-grav acceleration will work, once we get the magical mass effect field perfected we'll worry about that."

Hermione then remembered one of the odd quirks of the prothean phlebotinum based FTL, "Oh, and hopefully since we're not utilizing a static electrical field to great the mass effect field, we won't have the same static discharge issues that we're already seeing with the prothean vessels. Should make longer journeys easier."

"Well, Project Phoenix will definitely be easier to explain to the board," said Wilford with a nod. "Even just having our own FTL vessel will be profitable, since Emperor James and King Henry jointly donated the prothean vessels to the United Nations for study. Say what they will about the Emperor's plans, at least with a unified government we wouldn't be fighting over researching the prothean vessels and other artifacts."

"Of course, the real tragedy is that the battleship-class vessel was removed from the ruins before they were sealed. Think of how longer the phlebotinum core would be for a vessel a kilometer long?" noted Hermione. Mind, she mostly wanted it because it would be easier to build on the weapons technology to fight the Great Filter monsters that had wiped out the protheans. Instead they would have to build their own weapons to fight them off, and if the hints Winona had given her were correct, they only had a hundred and fifty years at most to advance past the protheans to fight off their Great Filter monsters. Either that, or they'd need the drive core to create a large enough ark to hide in the depths of interstellar space until the Great Filter has come and gone and they'll have fifty thousand more years to advance.

**Updated** June 10, 2014


	8. Hannah II

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Hannah II**

_October 25, 2025_

_Rowan Hill Palace, Imperial Center, Melas Chasma, Mars_

Their steps echoed through the large cavernous room, large enough for the largest giant to be comfortable. That also meant that it was large enough to play a regulation quidditch match in, with room for a few thousand fans. Hannah never really liked the room, but she understood it's purpose, and knew that in less than two years she'd be the one given the audience, rather than the other way around.

"Mum, why is this room so large?" asked Joseph, her only son. He was two weeks past his fourth birthday, and was in one of his inquisitive moods.

She stopped, and kneeled down, "Your grandfather, the Emperor, needs to be able to meet with any of his subjects, as well as any dignitaries from other countries. From the tallest giant to the most claustrophobic sphinx. That means that the room needs to be large."

"Oh," said Joseph.

Hannah stood, smoothing her skirt, and then took her son's hand once more and continued the trek across the audience chamber. The worst part was, that they weren't even going to be meeting her father, the Emperor, here, but instead in one of the smaller antechambers. And, because of the security requirements, only the entrance hall, which was nearly as large as the audience chamber, had a floo connection. She couldn't apparate either, since the entirety of Rowan Hill was under a high powered anti-apparition and anti-portkey ward.

"Grandpa!" shouted Joseph, pulling free of Hannah's hand and rushing the dozen meters to where her father had stepped out of the antechamber.

Hannah sighed as her father, wearing his traditional pinstripe three-piece suit, knelt down to give her son a hug. She loved her father, she really did, but he never really doted on her, or any of her siblings for that matter. When she was very young she'd spend a couple days each year with just her mum and father, then it came down to a day each year, shared with her younger siblings that also shared her birthday. Once he'd made himself Emperor of Mars, and by extension herself the Princess Imperial, they'd gotten closer, but then she went to Hogwarts, and by the time she'd gotten her NEWTs he'd gone back to sharing her birthday.

If she was honest with herself, it was why she'd waited until her late thirties to have Joseph, and why she'd promised herself that, unless something happened to him, he'd be an only child. She'd retired from the Space Force three months into the pregnancy, half because she didn't want to be an absentee parent like her father, and half because her vessel, the _Erebus_, was being retired, after less than a decade in space. While it was still quite functional, and the stealth systems were still second to none, the successful flight of the _Fawkes_ had made it obsolete.

FTL was incompatible with the arty-grav propulsion that was standard across the worlds, and so even the newest warvessels were being retired or put out to pasture on orbital patrol duty, and a brand new slate of vessels, with the massive rockets so characteristic of pre-acrid sci-fi were being used instead. She'd seen some of the preliminary corvette and frigate designs, and they wouldn't look out of place in a Star Wars movie.

"You're looking well," said the Emperor as Hannah finally made her way to over to her son and father.

"Thank you father, and you're looking well too," she said. And it was true, he didn't look like he'd aged a day since seeing her and her siblings off to Hogwarts so long ago. "But, enough of the small talk, we've come as you requested."

"I wouldn't quite go so far as to call it a request," he replied.

"When the Emperor asks, it's a request, hoever polite and cordial," she countered.

"I wasn't asking as your Emperor, I was asking as your dad."

"You're my father, my Emperor, and my mentor," replied Hannah honestly. "You were never my dad, no matter how many times I asked. You have too many children to ever be more than a father to them. Sirius is a dad to his children, Harry is a dad to his too, even Henry is a dad, and he's the bloody King of England!" She then paused to calm down, breathing heavily, "Hopefully I'l be able to me a mom to Joseph."

"I deserved that," her father admitted, leaning back into the wall behind him. "I had so many plans, and then the shit hit the fan with the acrids, and then Mars and the protheans, it just didn't stop. I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you like I should have been. There are only so many hours in the day, and even with a time turner I can't be everywhere."

"Thank you father, I'll remember that," Hannah replied with a small smile. "You brought us here to talk, so," she paused to gesture into the antechamber open beside him, "Shall we?"

"Of course," he said. He then looked down at Joseph, "Hey Joe, did you want to listen to your mum and I talk, or did you want to play with some of your aunts and uncles?"

"Father, I'd rather he stay, if it's alright with you. I want to make sure he's ready when the time comes for me to retire," Hannah interjected.

"Then, that settles it, come on Joe, Hannah, it's time we talked about the future of an Empire," he said, as he turned and walked into the room.

"Grandpa's weird," said Joseph.

"That he is, that he is," admitted Hannah, as he guided her son inside and followed her father, closing the door behind her.

While the entrance hall and audience chamber were built with giants, sphinxes, and a grand scale in mind, the antechamber felt comfortable. The walls were the same stone as the rest of the palace, but with the addition of the wooden shelves, the potted plants, and the various knickknacks, it was much more personal of a space. Hannah was amazed when she noticed that all of the pictures on the shelves, mixed in with the books and other bits, were of her.

There was her getting sorted by the Hat, her tie magically switching to silver and green before she rushed out of frame, only for the loop to reset and her eleven-year old self walk back into frame, sit down, and put the Hat upon her head. Another was her receiving her commission, her father pinning the gold emblem on her collar. Next was a picture of her first bit of frame, her time on national TV when her father revealed the existence of magic, fidgeting on the couch alongside Artemis and Apollo.

"And no, I didn't just put the pictures up because of our meeting," said her father as he looked from picture to picture. "I may not have been as large a part of your life as either of us would have liked, but you were always special to me, my little girl, my princess, even before I was the Emperor. You were my first child, and while you've had to share me with thousands of siblings, you were always first in my heart."

"Then why did you keep having children?" she asked, turning from the memories and glaring at her father across the room.

She was surprised when she saw him bit his lip, a sure sign of his discomfort.

"I'm not sure if I ever really told you, but when I arrived here from my original timeline, I had nothing. Yes, I had your aunt, but other than that, nothing. I had no other family, no friends, and nothing but a bit of knowledge of what might happen if nothing changed," he said, leaning forward onto the back of the armchair where Joseph sat, his legs kicking off the edge of the seat and his interest held by a game on his wrist comp.

"Then you freed Sirius, made a bunch of money, killed Riddle, and then united the Deathly Hallow and stole the Philosopher's Stone. You've told me the story a dozen times," continued Hannah, leaning back onto the edge of a book shelf, her legs crossed at the ankles.

"I had a plan," he said with a sigh. "I was going to grow the number of magicals, make us a plurality, if not he majority, and then unite the world and rule it as Emperor. It was going to take years, decades, centuries even, but it was my plan. No, it was The Plan, capital 'T', capital 'P'. I even had a fallback plan where I'd head to a small African nation, kill all the men, and then impregnante all the women."

"And why didn't you?" asked Hannah, having never heard this side of the tale.

"The Acrid Empire decided to invade," he admitted.

"And then you defeated the evil acrids, and freed the slaves, and brought them all here to Mars!" said Joseph, finishing the tale while still immersed in his game.

"Well, it was a bit more complicated than that. I had to make a treaty with the President of the United States, and then I had to move the largest spaceship ever constructed from it's dangerous orbit around Earth to a stable one here around Mars. Then I had to figure out how to form a government from slaves and outcasts. It's actually why I offered a home to the dwarves, I needed their help in administering things."

"But you still needed a bureaucracy you could trust," said Hannah, understanding what was happening. "You needed an aristocracy, and so, you changed your plans."

Her father nodded, "That I did. You were my heir, my Princess Imperial, but I needed Viceroys, Dukes, Counts and, Barons. I needed people who I could trust to rule with enlightened self-interest. And I needed enough to manage not just Mars, but our future as well."

"The galaxy is a dangerous place, and we're but a small, disunited, backwater system," her father admitted, leaning more into the back of the chair, his chin nearly resting on his folded arms. "We need to expand, and not just into space stations, though that's a good start, especially with the SAPL coming online."

Hannah had remembered when the news of the first mirrors for the Solar Array Pumped Laser had been installed inside of Mercury's orbit. They were massive concave mirrors, a tenth of a kilometer in diameter, than would reflect and concentrate the sunlight, cooled with the same charms that had made the _Erebus_ invisible in the infrared. Six of them, each with a surface area of two thousand square meters, reflected their sunlight to a seventh, which then reflected the concentrated sunlight forward. Six such arrays reflected light into another array, which concentrated it again before reflecting it onwards. Six of those arrays fed into another, which was fed along with five more into another. Level after level, gathering, reflecting, and concentrating the sunlight, before sending it to a statite, a stationary satellite perfectly place a quarter of an AU above the north pole of the Sun, which then directed the dangerous beam of sunlight out towards the asteroid belt, or even further. While it had been commissioned as a tool, a way to melt asteroids to get at the precious metals within, it also had served as a weapon… for about two months before shields and wards had been deployed that made it useless except against unwary targets; such as invading aliens, and asteroids and comets.

"The first of the Ringo Spheres should be ready for inflation by the end of the year, which brings me back to the main topic of our discussion. The future of the Empire, and by extension, the rest of the Children of Sol," her father said with a sigh.

"The 'Ringo Spheres'? I'm not familiar with them," said Hannah.

"Take an asteroid, an M-type, preferably mostly nickel-iron, and then cut a cylinder out of the middle, and pull it out of both sides. Shove a bit of comet in there, and then put the two halves of the core back into their holes. A bit of transmutation gets the ends to seal back up, leaving the water and dirt of the comet inside. Then, you heat it up evenly with the SAPL, using arty-grav to rotate so that all the sides are heated. The asteroid melts, and then so too does the comet, which then boils, and turns into steam. The steam expands the molten asteroid like a giant balloon."

"Just how big of a balloon are we talking about?" asked Hannah.

"The first one that we're inflating should be about the same diameter as a City Destroyer, but with a kilometer thick nickel-iron hull. That's just a proof of concept, we should be able to scale it up or down, the only limit being the amount of metal in the candidate astroid and how thick you want the hull to be," her father explained, to her amazement.

"That's what… twelve kilometer radius… square that to a gross… then four pi, round that to twelve again… so twelve cubed… seventeen twenty-eight square kilometers," said Hannah, running the calculation in her head.

"Well, twenty-five kilometer interior diameter, so closer to twelve and a half cubed," corrected her father. "So a few square kilometers smaller than Delaware. Enough for a million or two to live comfortably on the interior surface, or twenty million or so if you leave the outer five hundred meters for actual hull and build in layers. We're thinking of using an orion drive coupled with a frankly massive mass effect ward to get it up into FTL. We're also planning on using them as Arks, since with a hull that thick you're fine at even a double digit fraction of c as long as you don't have any solar systems between you and your destination.

"Of course, most are either going to be much smaller, only a few kilometers in diameter, to serve as cargo or warvessels, or much larger, about the size of a dwarf planet, to serve as proper colonies in their own right. Heck, with that much space inside you could put in an open fusion reactor and have your own artificial sun inside, using a smaller hemisphere as a mirror to get proper day and night cycles on the interior surface."

"And how exactly do you plan on populating these massive colonies of yours?" asked Hannah. "I mean, you can convince, maybe, a hundredth of a percent to migrate, and that if you're got a garden world, or even a marginal one like Mars, to colonize. I'm not sure you'd even get one in a million to live in one of those moon-sized colonies," countered Hannah.

"And that's where things get interesting," said her father. "You remember how Cerberus had to leave Scotland… was it eight years ago already?"

Hannah nodded, "Between Hermione and Arty I gathered that there was an experiment that even the King himself couldn't get an exception for."

"While not technically cloning, it was clone enough that it wasn't going to fly," admitted her father. "So, New Denver was built in record time, and they moved their operations off-world."

"Cloning?" asked Hannah. That wasn't part of the conversation she'd had, either with her cousin the Queen Consort or her friend the Cerberus research director.

"Not technically," he quickly defended. "It's really an outgrowth of the regen tanks that were introduced last year. It's against the law, international law that even we're party to, to put a minor or a pregnant woman into the tank, no matter how serious the injury or how much their parents say it's fine," explained her father.

Hannah had actually thought about going into the tank herself, she wouldn't mind dropping a decade and a half, but resolved to only do so if she was injured or after she'd retired in thirty-two years. "So, I assume the side effect is pretty ghastly?"

"Not exactly, it just does for minors… and unborn babies… exactly what it does for adults: heal all their injuries, cure all their diseases, whether genetic or afflicted, and give them a body of someone in their mid-twenties."

"Oh, that would mean…" answered Hannah, realizing the grisly prospect. "But the external wombs, they're fine. I mean, Dorea and little Sirius are still kids."

"It's the same technology, just missing the important bit of magic that makes the regen tanks thaumaturgy. The only magic is the switching spell that transfers the embryo, and even that's only required for _in vivo_ embryos, _in vitro_ fertilization allows for direct transfer of the embryo into the external womb. It's actually safer than normal fertility treatments, since there's no chance of a multiple birth or the embryo failing to take hold in the lining of the uterus," her father explained.

"But, if you put an embryo into a regen tank?" asked Hannah.

"Well, the process we're using adds another element, well, two actually. The 'clone tanks', as they're called, add in a controlled release of phlebotinum, as well as memory elixirs. Six months after starting them up, you've got a fully grown adult with a full secondary education, including psionics and magic."

"Magic?" she asked.

"Why 'clone' mundanes when you can 'clone' magicals?" he answered, as if it was obvious.

"Of course, they're not true clones," and he paused with a shudder. "No, not true clones at all."

"What do you mean they're not true clones?" Hannah asked.

"You know that I and my sister have a special ability? To absorb souls?"

"Souls?"

"There is a joke, that 'Gingers have no souls'. Well, I can attest that gingers, indeed, have souls. All humans do, fae as well, some of the great apes and dolphins too, though theirs are not as bright as those of the more traditionally sapient species. All of our alien citizens, they too have souls."

"And AI?" asked Hannah. She'd remembered the large debate that has raged in public opinion when EVE had been made public, but had never quire caught how it's ended, just that it did.

Her father nodded, "It's actually quite beautiful, Winona shared the memory with me. She was there when the first of the Daughters of EVE gained sapience. The computer was dark, just a computer and a random painting on the back, connected to the internet and left to grow into a being. Then, like a spark starting a conflagration the soul blossomed. It was beautiful. I've seen it with the wombs as well, with most of my children, that moment when the soul is born and a being, well, becomes. It almost makes the curse I have worth it, to see that moment."

"And the clones?" Hannah asked softly, noticing her son was beginning to nod off rather than plan his game. She hadn't been up since early that morning in anticipation, and so wasn't surprised by his tiredness.

Her father shook his head, and then looked down at the drowsy Joseph, before looking back to Hannah, "There was no spark. No conflagration. They grew, and when they were decanted they were alive, but… you've seen the videos of the victims of the dementors, right?"

Hannah shuddered, remembering the video her father had shown her when she was just ten years old. The man had been sentenced to execution, and had volunteered to give his life to science rather than die by lethal injection. So, he was brought into a room, and a dementor was brought in as well, likely summoned by her father for just that purpose. The man was a mundane, and so he couldn't see the dementor, only feel it, the icy cold and the soul crushing despair. Then, and because the camera had been specially modified to see magic she could see, the dementia bent over the man, and gave him the kiss. She could see the soul leave the man's body, and enter into the dementor. She would never forget the appearance of the man's body after the soul was gone, it was alive, but it wasn't living.

"Exactly," he said, likely seeing the look of abject horror that played across her face. "No, no matter what the detractors say, we are not breeding clones. It had been the plan at first, hence the name, but they didn't work out. Perhaps it was our method, perhaps if we had a better way…"

He shook his head again, "No, not clones, they're just rapidly growth adults. Most of the ones born so far have been grown from a collection of eggs and sperm donated for scientific research, as well as those donated by the tank-born themselves, though we keep a complete record of the full ancestry of all of the tank-born to limit any chances of interbreeding."

"Just how many of these 'tank-born' are around?" Hannah asked.

Her father stood up straight and activated his wrist-comp, which was one of the latest models with integrated holograms. She saw the scrolling words, but since she wasn't on the correct side of the display, it was all out of focus, not to mention across the room from her.

"As of this morning's births, five hundred thousand, two hundred twenty-three," he announced. "We've got enough set up so that we get another three hundred born every day."

"And how many of them are my siblings, niblings, or cousins?" asked Hannah, realizing just how dangerous those sorts of numbers could be to the House of Shepard.

Her father put up his arms in defense, "No, no, I'd never. Not a one, at least, not technically."

"Technically?" asked Hannah, no longer leaning against the wall but pacing slightly.

"You have to understand, during the late eighties and early nineties I did a bit of an experiment, a different spin on my quest to have the most magical children. I, well the easiest way to explain it would be to call it polyjuice, but that's not technically true. But effectively what I did was replace the sperm and eggs within the various banks at fertility clinics and the like with my… polyjuiced replacement. A sort of 'nature versus nurture' experiment."

Hannah sighed. She'd get upset, but then, she'd have to care about how stupid her father had been, and she just didn't have time for that. "Are they Shepards?"

"Genetically? No, they aren't. The only thing I gave them was magic. It's actually why there was a spike in first generation magicals during the late nineties and early naughts. Of course, quite a few died during the War, and since I wasn't really paying attention, just, quite literally, spreading my seed, I didn't keep records of where I went. So, since the germ cells used for the 'tank-borns' came from random witches and wizards, and there's a large number of witches and wizards born of my spread seeds, there's a non-zero chance that some of the 'tank-born' are my grand-children, or considering that we've had not a few generations, n-great grandchildren."

"Ingrate?" asked Hannah, confused.

Her father shook his head, "No, 'n-great', as in 'an indeterminate number, n, of greats'."

Hannah sighed, again. "You aren't making my life easier, you know."

He chuckled, "If your life were easy, it'd be boring."

"So, these half a million 'tank-born'… Since some of them might be family, however removed due to your polyjuice, or whatever, shenanigans, they're all family, however removed," she declared. No matter how much she despised her father's methods, and there was no doubt that she despised them, up to and including him gaining the Empire of Mars in the first place, she didn't hate him, and she'd not transfer her hatred of the method to the result. Not to mention the dozens of secrets that he'd shared with her nearly thirty years he'd been Emperor, and she the Princess Imperial, such as the Mass Relay that was still being studied under the ice of Charon. "They won't be Shepards, but they are family. So, what was your plan with them?"

"Well, once we found a good colony, or if not in time, once we had a Ringo Sphere to make one, we'd move them there, and use the 'clone' tanks to make sure that the Empire maintained the largest population on the colony planet. Do that for dozens or even hundreds of planets, and eventually the Empire of Mars becomes the default nation of the Children of Sol just by making the rest a marginal minority."

Hannah could not fathom how stupid that idea was. While the 'cloning' was illegal on Earth and Mars, which reminded Hannah to ask where the 'clone' tanks were, likely on the Mothership, now that most of the population had moved down to the surface, that treaty would last only as long as nobody was obviously in violation of it. Once the colonies were dominated by Martians that would let the cat out of the bag. Since the only part of the regen tanks that was expensive was the fluid, since only Cerberus has access to her father's stolen Philosopher's Stone, it would create an economic reason for the supra-nationals to finally put money into replicating the Stone.

Already the supra-nationals were getting upset with the power of the Empire. The Anglo-Luso Alliance, comprised of the "white" dominions of the old Commonwealth of Nations alongside the United Kingdom, the former African colonies of Portugal alongside Portugal itself, Israel, and the United States of America, was perhaps the most economically powerful of the supra-nationals, and after the Empire, was the most powerful militarily, but was also the most spread out across Earth, as well as the various associated colonies on Venus, Luna, and the Jovian moons. Then there was the European Federation, the closest of the supra-nationals to the pre-Independence War concept of a nation, born out of the ashes of the European Union, along with the western half of North Africa: Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Nearly thirty years after the Independence War it had returned to it's industrial and economic height, though resented Britain once more leave Europe.

To the east of the EF was the Commonwealth of Independent State, which was neither a commonwealth nor were it's members independent, instead it was the second coming of either the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, depending on who you asked. Russia had expanded quickly in the aftermath of the Independence War, bringing the Baltic states back under their control, as well as moving into the ashes of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, ostensibly for "humanitarian" reasons, but in reality to finally achieve the long held goal of a warm water port. In doing so Russia and the CIS were briefly the most powerful in Eurasia, but last that title to the South and East Asian Cooperative.

Since Hannah considered herself as much British as she did Martian, having grown up in her mother's home in Lincolnshire, she knew how valuable India was. Now going by Bharat, it formed the largest part of the SEAC, alongside Japan, the reunited Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. At least Malaysia and Singapore had joined the ALA, the only nations in Indochina that had been spared annexation by the resurgent PRC.

While the early nineties had begun to see an opening up of China following the oppression of the Maoists following the Chinese Civil War and the Japanese invasion during WWII, the destruction of the Independence War had nearly destroyed the bureaucracy. The brief civil war that broke out led to a resurgent, and once gain fully Maoist Socialist, China following Russia's lead and swept into Indochina. Unlike Russia and the CIS, though, the PRC fully integrated Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam into the People's Republic. It was only the threat of American, British, and Indian military intervention that forces them for entering Malaysia, though at least the peace treaty did get them to renounce their claims eternally on Macau, Hong Kong (what was left of both after being destroyed by the City Destroyers), and Taiwan.

While the ALA, the EF, the CIS, the SEAC, and the PRC were the most powerful of the supra-nationals, rivaling or at least contesting the Empire of Mars economically or militarily, there remained three more supra-nationals, each growing and recovering much slower from the Independence War, and the events that preceded it.

The Latin Union stretched from Mexico to Patagonia, encompassing all of the Spanish-speaking American nations, as well as most of the Caribbean that wasn't in the ALA or EF. The African Union went from the southern edge of the Sahara to the southern border of the Congo, and while it contained the wreckage of three City Destroyers, they were the most intact and least exploited, and thus provided significantly less resources and revenue to the AU, though they did have the highest proportion of naturally occurring psions. The last of the supra-nationals had faced the hardest recovery from the Independence War and the post-petroleum economy that followed, the Arab Republic, encompassing most of the former Ottoman Empire, as well as the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. It was closer to a theocracy than a republic, but they were slowly recovering, and had embraced the legacy of scientific progress that the region had maintained when Europe was wallowing in the post-Rome Dark Ages and that had left with the Crusades.

As she thought about the supra-nationals she realized that her father's plan would ultimately fail, because none of them would be content letting Mars take the lead in representing the Children of Sol, no matter if a third of the population of the solar system was already within the Empire. "You really think they'd let us do that? They'll spend more money than they did on nukes to replicate the philosopher's stone, and once they have it, we'll not be able to maintain our monopoly on the 'clone' tanks, and after that, it's just a matter of numbers, and despite what you'd believe, the numbers are not on our side."

"Three billion is nothing to scoff at, it's half the population of Earth," her father pointed out.

"But a third of that is murgars, and they can't use the tanks. The kzin'shassas, acrids, and dwarves can't sustain that sort of growth, culturally speaking. Already there's factions looking for more non-human representation in the government, and I don't want my legacy to be the fall of the Empire. I won't let it happen," she declared. "Even if I have to give ground to the Earthlings. You may see the Empire as just another cog in your grand plan, but I don't, and you've already said that in two years you're stepping down. You can't stop that, which means that I'll lead the Empire how I see fit, and I won't let it be destroyed by your plans. Right now the Empire is the most integrated nation across the worlds, we have the majority of non-humans, and growing fae and non-baseline human populations, including the dwarves, which you yourself brought to Mars. I will not see that fall apart because you wanted to take over the worlds when you were young. If anything, we'll do this the right way, by making the Empire more attractive to immigrants. Yes, we'll use the 'clone' tanks, but not to overwhelm the non-Martian populations, but to maintain a healthy growth."

"I thought you were supposed to be ambitious," stated her father.

Hannah couldn't believe her father had just said that. "Really? Is that what you've come to? Quoting bits about what bloody house I was sorted into nearly thirty years ago? How about this for being bloody fucking Slytherin? This isn't about ambition, I have more than enough of that. Hell, the Empire has more than enough of that! It's about tradition, determination, leadership, self-preservation, fraternity, and power," she growled, as she began to stalk about the antechamber.

"Tradition?" she asked with a scoff. "What does the Empire of Mars have for tradition? We're not even thirty years old, and most of our tradition we either gained when you took in the exiled dwarves, was the complete opposite of what the acrid empire did, or was because you read about it once when you were in your twenties and decided it would be cool to use it. We have three completing traditions. We have the dwarves, with their clans and their warriors, a fine tradition, once that the kzin'shassas have taken as their own. Then there's the murgars, who despite thousands of years of slavery, maintained their traditions by virtue of their ancestral memories, passed down from mother to daughter. Their religion has become the dominant one in the Empire, such that I'm thinking of converting, though perhaps once you're no longer such a saintly figure. Their language, adopted first by the kzin'shassas as slaves, rivals English and Khazdul for adoption, and I'm pretty sure I'll be making all three the co-official languages of the Empire when I take over as Empress. And then there's the pastiche of aristocracy and bureaucracy you've foisted onto our people, well, I keep saying 'our' people, but now that I think about it, they're never been 'your' people, have they? They were merely a means to an end, first it was a way to be a 'real' Emperor after your cheated your way to victory over the acrid empire, and then it was a way to build a force to defeat your mythical Reapers, or as Hermione called them, the Great Filter monsters. But me, they're 'my' people, unlike you I didn't cheat, I learned Khazdul, Murgish, and even Iglishmêk the hard way, by studying them with their native speakers. That's tradition, something you don't know a damned thing about."

"Then there's determination. Which I'll admit, you have in spades, at least, when you can make up your damned bloody mind about what to care about. I look at our people, **my** people, and I see a people that lack not just tradition, but a determination. They have no goal, no purpose beyond the day to day. The Americans, God and Merlin rest their souls, had determination, Manifest Destiny, and then it was the American Dream. Is there a Martina Dream? No! You've created this mass of chaos, and you've left it to me to figure out where to take my people. And I will lead my people. We won't just be another cog in your dream of a Children of Sol, we will instead by the instigators of the Children of Sol, the soul, so to speak. Integration without losing who and what we are. Humans, in all our shapes and sizes, fae in their myriad and flighty forms, the silent but deadly acrids, the murgars with their strength and ancient wisdom, and the kzin'shassa with their cunning and grace. Let's not forget the so-called Daughter of EVE either, since they're the newest of Sol's children."

"Leadership, well, you've foisted that upon me, and my siblings, and we're lead, but on our own terms. And not just the Empire, but across the worlds too. We'll do our best to be the best at all that we do, but not just to be the best, but to lead, to bring the others along so that we can all be stronger, better, and smarter than we were before."

"And that leads me to self-preservation. When I was a young girl in the Slytherin dorms I learned self preservation. For as much as I knew about magic before I went, I was effectively muggle-raised, and while it wasn't as bad as it was when Aunt Winnie and Uncle Sirius first started teaching, it still wasn't easy for a muggle-raised girl in the snake-pit. But my sisters, we kept together, and we became strong, protected each other with the help of our brothers. You didn't make it easy on us, but you did allow us to learn how to survive and work as a team. That self-preservation will serve as well as the leaders of Sol. Because, as much as I hate to admit it, the Reapers, the Great Filter, it's out there, and if we don't figure out a way to defeat it, we'll go the way of the protheans, a footnote in history, ruins to be picked over by the next sapient species to step out from their proverbial forests."

"Fraternity, well, I've already touched on that. Right now the Empire isn't an empire, it's four separate nations living on the same planet. The dwarves have their great city Nurkhazaddûm beneath Olympus Mons, but aside from a few murgars and acrids, it's exclusively dwarven. The acrids have almost all collected in Utopia, while the kzin'shassa clans have taken Helles. Imperial Center is where the humans and what fae you'v convinced to come here have settled, with just enough of the other species to have the illusion of integration. I saw more giants on the way over than I did acrids or murgars. There is no fraternity, but then, that's because there is no Imperial Tradition, no Imperial Culture, nothing that binds us together beyond our Empire and our Emperor. I'll have to change that, bring us together, for where their is unity, there is strength."

"And last, but certainly not least, is power, and at least in this regard you've excelled for your Empire, though I guess that's something you've always excelled in cultivating," Hannah admitted, as she stopped in front of the chair opposite her father and son. She paused then, in her rambling monologue, to properly sit down, crossing her legs at the knee, and then smoothing her skirt over them.

"Economically, militarily, and educationally, the Empire is the most powerful across the worlds, and as long as we have the Mothership, and the largest reserve of phlebotinum that isn't locked away in the prothean FTL cores, as well as the prothean ruins, and our outpost on Charon, we'll maintain all three measure of power. Unfortunately we're weeks, if not days, away from the launching of the first wave of exploration vessels, set out to discover new life, and hopefully new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before. When that happens we'll have to move quickly, to capitalize on our current position of power so that we can maintain it. Make it so that none of the supra-nationals can challenge us, even if they work together in groups of two or three. And to do that, will require more consistent vision that you've had so far."

"So, that's your plan? To usurp the throne two years early?" her father asked.

"No, my plan is for your to retire two years early, in light of the rapid advances. You'll then retire to your harem, where you can have as many more children as you like, since we'll be needing more bureaucrats and soldiers in the coming expansion. You'll help me raise my son, teaching him the secrets of our Empire, while I teach him how to rule, and then his tutors teach him everything else he needs to know. He'll go to Hogwarts, not because it's better, but because it's traditional, and while he needs to be a Martian, he also needs to be separate from his future subjects. Then, he'll return and attend University here, perhaps serve some time in the Mobile Infantry or Space Forces, before preparing himself for becoming Emperor, and unlike me, he'll start sooner at adjusting the forces of Empire to suit his reign, such that he'll not need to force me to retire."

"Perhaps a two year period of co-Emperors?" suggested her father as a compromise, knowing that he'd lost, but in Hannah's opinion trying not to let her win.

"Like the Eastern Roman Empire?" asked Hannah, intrigued. It had potential, and would allow for both a smoother transition as well as keep the thirty-year period her father had already established. "Perhaps. Let me think on it."

As she stared into her father's eyes she realized just how important the surgery she'd received before going to Hogwarts was. While she'd at first lamented the loss of the potential, the distance the runes had put between her and her new acrid friends, she had come to appreciate their utility. She knew her father was a master as mental manipulation, it was how he'd learned about the runes from President Whitmore in the first place, and if he'd really wanted to keep things going his way, this would be the perfect opportunity to influence her mind and her memories. Instead, it became a contest of wills, as they stared at each other.

"Is that all you wanted to talk about father?" she finally asked, breaking off the mutual stare.

"There is more, but it's not important, in light of our conversion," he admitted. "I expect your son will be receiving his runes well before Hogwarts then?"

"Yes, perhaps I should schedule it tonight. Though I'll obviously not tell you with whom," Hannah said, standing and then slowly crossing to where her son sat, lightly dozing, in the chair where her father leaned.

"Why schedule it at all?" he asked.

"And do it like you did? No father, I think not. I have a few connections still from Hogwarts, and a few more from my days in the Space Force. I'll be able to get his mind protected without having to flay his skull myself," she said, reaching down and picking up her son.

"Until the morrow then?" he asked.

Hannah nodded, "Until the morrow." Then then store to the door, but then stopped when she got there, the door half-open, and then turned, "I'll have my people call your people." She then stepped out the door, and closed it behind her.

She could just barely hear her father's parting comment, and it brought a smile to her face, "That's my girl."

**Updated** Jun 11, 2014


	9. Winona I

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Winona I**

_April 18, 2030_

_Project Collodi, CSV Sparta, Interstellar Space_

A deep breath.

Wet skin, a tight space, eyes not quite working right, since everything was fuzzy colored blobs.

"Here, take this," said a familiar voice, though she couldn't quite place it.

She reached out, felt the familiar texture of terrycloth. It was a robe.

"I'm naked," she said to herself.

"Not anything I haven't seen before, from either side," the voice said. She squinted, and could just make out a dark figure.

"Who are you?" she asked, then coughed, a bit of liquid still in her lungs.

"Careful now, you don't want to hack up the lung, just get out the bacta," said the voice. It was a man's voice, but the familiarity was enough that she only loosely tied the robe around her.

"Who are you?" she asked again.

"I used to be you," said the man. "Or rather, you used to be me. I'm going on a trip, and you're needed here."

"Used to be…" she said, then her memory finally jogged.

Scenes of seeing a skeleton or a man change into a woman. A glass hourglass charm on a necklace.

A time turner, a memories finally told her. So that I could go back in time and live a dual life.

Two years, that's how long it worked for, sent her back in time to live another life, four years at a time.

"But? The memories, they don't feel right," she said. She had visions of learning how to control her magic wandlessly, and her psionics too.

"I don't have psionics," she said, shaking her head and leaning up against the side of the tank.

"You didn't have psionics, but now you do. It's… complicated, but I need you to remember," the man, her former self… Jimmy, said.

"But how? We can't use psionics. We don't have the phlebotinum… the eezo… to use it," she said.

"Winnie, I need you to remember. What's the last thing you remember?" he asked again.

She looked up at him, her eyes working better now. He was still fuzzy, but she could make out her features now. It's like her eyes were brand new…

Her eyes were brand new. She had just coughed up some bacta. She was inside a regen tank.

No, not a regen tank, but a clone tank.

"I thought…" she began, but then another memory returned, frighteningly slow.

Her brother nodded, "You're remembering now, aren't you."

"It's… difficult. My mind, it… It works so slowly now. I remember being able to think quicker," she said, her frustration tinging her voice.

"It's a side effect," he said. "I need you to remember what happened. It's very important, but I can't tell you what it is."

"Why? I mean, somethings different, causality…" she said, then remembered.

The pain. By God and Merlin was there pain. pain she'd never felt before, as if…

"That's the ticket," he said, snapping his fingers.

"The time turners, they have limits," she said, remembering the pain and its cause. "We tried to go too far… to fast. Within the solar system, it was fine, it was well within the limits."

"Exactly, and I'm needed elsewhere, and you're needed here," he said, as if that explained everything. But it didn't.

"How? I thought cloning didn't work?" she said, stepping forward carefully, still leaning against the side of the clone tank. "I don't feel like a soulless monster. In fact, I feel a lot less like a soulless monster than I remember feeling." She let out a chuckled that led into a giggle.

"Well, I wouldn't ever claim I was soulless, though it felt that way sometimes. I guess technically I have more soul than normal," Jimmy said, reaching out to give her a hand.

She took it without thinking, and then let go, recoiling, "Causality!"

"It's alright," he said. "I guess you're still missing the important bit. It's there, I know it is, but I need you to remember."

Winona stood, and thought back, trying to trace her memories. It was frustrating, as her memories told her that this was supposed to be easier.

"Use your occlumency," Jimmy suggested. "It's not quite the same, but it'll help, or so I hear."

Occlumency, she'd never needed it before, but then, suddenly, a memory came to her, less distinct that most she'd uncovered so far, of learning how to use occlumency as a teenager. Sitting in the classroom with the other girls, learning from a professor she thought was pretty hunky. But… she'd never been a teenager, at least not one that could learn occlumency, and definitely never as a girl.

It worked, though, the memories quickly became organized into three piles. The largest pile was the clearest, memories of the last… fifty years, though there was enough there for three or four times that, a side effect of the time turner and living at least two different lives. They were all crystal clear, easy to recall, though they still weren't in any sort of order.

The smallest pile was the most… indistinct. It covered roughly twenty five years, learning to walk, learning to talk, discovering magic and psionics. Going to school, learning about history, about the Independence War and the rise of the Empire of Mars. There was a first kiss, a first dance, a fumbling attempt at losing her virginity. It seemed like a life, but it wasn't one that she'd lived, only remembered.

"We need to work on the memories we give the tank born," she remarked idly, her finger tapping her chin as she refreshed her memory. "They're a little thin."

Jimmy nodded, "I know, but they were never intended to fully replicate a childhood, just to give them the basics. They don't know what's different about their past, though we've not hidden their nature from them."

She returned to the memories, looking for the middle-sized pile. It started with him waking up in a bed, looking out a window, and watching his parents working on the strawberry patch in the back yard.

His? That contracted sharply with the smaller pile, though slightly agreed with the largest.

These were her original memories, from her original life, before she'd been turned into a lich and sent to an alternate past. She'd not looked at these memories in years.

"Have you found it?" Jimmy asked.

She shook her head, "I'm not looking there quite yet. I'm going over our old life."

"Winnie, I need you to remember what happened, it's very important, because as much as I love you, I don't have all the time in the world to wait while you remember," Jimmy said impatiently, tapping his toe.

"But the time turner…" she said, then remembered. The explosion. The time turner blew up, the energy required to transport her back in time two years, but also nearly a lightyear in space, was just too much. Like all forms of magical transportation used by humans, the time turner couldn't go faster than light, and apparently it couldn't even go half that speed.

"We can't time travel anymore, the distance, it caused a paradox, and so the universe did the only thing it could do, it destroyed the time turners, all of them," she said, remembering attempting to summon a new time turner from the Demense, and receiving only a destroyed bauble.

Jimmy shook his head, "Exactly. Which means that I can only be one of us."

"But if you can only be one of us, then who am I?" Winona asked.

"Put it together," he said hopefully. Then he smacked himself on the forehead, "I forgot, it's a secret."

"It's a secret, but I can't remember it, because you're not me anymore. Why can't I remember the secret? I knew it before, I remember knowing it." Winona asked. She thought she should know the answer, but it was missing, a hole in her mind caused by the secret.

"Um, sorry," he said with a blush. "Polyjuice can be used with the regen tanks to change the subjects genetics."

Suddenly she remembered.

She remembered reading the frantic report from one of the Cerberus regen facilities on Earth, a famous actress had arrived twice for her scheduled regen. It seemed that a transgendered fan had broken into her house and drugged her, taking a strand of hair, then arriving for her regen treatment. The polyjuice had interacted with the bacta, the diluted elixir of life, and had convinced the magic of the bacta that the genetics of the actress was correct, rather than the genetics of the man the polyjuice hid. It was interesting, and luckily a simple gender change potion would elicit the same deception without stealing someones identity, so she'd hidden it behind a _fidelious_, making it a secret. Unfortunately, she wasn't herself anymore, but someone else.

"I'm a clone," Winona said softly. "I'm a clone of myself… made with polyjuice, and some random embryo and… given my own memories," she continued, getting more distraught.

"Not a random embryo, but yes, that's the gist of it," said Jimmy, trying to calm her down.

"I'm human," she said. She smiled, and gave a nervous chuckle, "I'm finally human again."

Jimmy chuckled, "It's why I called this little effort Project Collodi."

"Collodi… the writer of Pinocchio?" she said. She giggled, "I'm a real girl."

"You're welcome, and use it well," he said with a sigh. "I have bigger and better things to do."

"What about your children, my niblings?" she asked using the term they'd discovered for nieces and nephews, similar to how sibling was used for brother and sister. "What am I going to tell them?"

"Remember a bit further, the funeral. It was during your time in the tank, but it should still be there," he said.

"It was at Rowan Hill Palace, everyone who was anyone was there. Dignitaries from across the worlds, your children, my children. You laid in state for a week, and even then there were still lines on the last day."

"Where'd the body come from?" she asked, realizing that there had to have been a body, but since the lich was already there, and the time turners had been destroyed, there wasn't another body to put in the coffin.

"I pulled a Crouch, though this time I just used polyjuice on one of the soulless clones rather than someone else. Then killed it in a replica explosion. Even left the destroyed turner in place around the beck," he answered.

"Why? I mean, the turners disappeared decades ago," she asked.

"Whitmore knew, and so did others I'm sure. This way I have a bit of a legacy, the first and last person to die from a paradox," he said, with a smug smile on his face.

"So, what now?" she asked, still standing in the plain room in a terrycloth robe a few steps outside of the regen tank.

"Now? Well, now we go our separate ways. You go back to New Denver and take care of your husband, kids, and grandkids. Help Hannah raise Joey right perhaps. Have another kid or two, name it after me," he offered.

"I already have a James, if you hadn't forgotten," she countered mockingly.

"No, not after me," he said, and then changed.

Winona gasped, as she saw what she used to look like, fifty years ago, and yet only seven years ago. He was fat, of that there was no doubt, with thin strands of curly hair the color of chocolate milk, and a stubborn mustache and goatee. He wore a slightly large short-sleeved button-down blue shirt over a white undershirt, comfortably loose jean shorts, and toe-shoes.

"Name him after me," he said.

Winona sniffed, remembering who she was before she'd been cast across dimensions, turned into a lich, and then had her memories shoved into a clone.

"Wait, you said the embryo wasn't random, who's was it?" she asked.

"It was mine, or rather, as close as I could get. Jerked off into a cup, then took a gender change potion, and extracted the egg, then did a rapid _in vitro_ fertilization, and shoved the embryo into the tank," he said. "You may have been Shepard's sister, but you truly are my daughter."

Winona sniffed again, a tear slowly rolling down her cheek.

"Now, before I go, I need to remind you about a few important things," he said, as he shifted back into his familiar shape as James Shepard.

"I remember everything you did, not just as me, but as you, why do you need to remind me of?" she asked.

"A few rules, now that you're human. First, you're no longer immortal, so stay safe. You can't rely on your phylactery to keep you safe anymore. Second, eat right and exercise. Again, no more magic to make yourself eternally slim and healthy, though there are quite a few potions that help in that regard, use them judiciously. Third, you're no longer a slave to causality, but in your freedom, you've lost your power to make changes. I remind you of the Terminator, 'No fate but what we make.' Fourth, I'll take care of the rest of the galaxy, I need you to take care of Sol. If it wasn't for us, they'd not be in this position, we need to make sure they can survive the Reapers," said said, ticking off the notes on his fingers.

"Anything else?" she asked.

He then stepped forward, and gave her a hug, "I love you."

Winona returned the hug, "I love you too."

They stepped apart.

"Oh, and one more thing, unless you really want to explain things, keep your psionics secret," he added.

"Why not just, you know, keep it a secret?" she said.

Another forehead slap, "See, this is why I left you here in Sol, you're better at this than I am. I'm just going to clear out all the relays I can find until I reach the edge of Citadel space. If you find a relay, it'll lead to Citadel space. I'd recommend naming that planet Shanxi, just for grins and chuckles."

"Will do. But, what then, what are you going to do after you clear out our neck of the woods of relays?" she asked.

"I'm thinking finding the key places. Feros, Eden Prime, Ilos if I can find it. Maybe see if I can talk to the Geth," he said.

"Don't fuck too many asari," countered Winona playfully.

"Hmm, I wonder if I can survive an Ardat-Yakshi?" he chuckled.

Their conversation devolved into quips until Winona finally had to stop because she was getting a bit chilly. After letting her get dressed, he preformed the _fidelious_.

"Keep it secret, keep it safe," he joked, as the secret lodged itself in her mind.

"So, where exactly are we?" she asked, looking around at the metallic walls and the indirect lighting.

"We're on the _CSV Sparta_, a twenty-kilometer ringo sphere, about two lightyears coreward of Sol," he said.

"'Sparta'? Wasn't that the vessel you were planning to build the clone army in?" she asked.

"Yep, might still do, especially since I can actually build a proper clone army," he responded with a chuckle. "Really it's because it's where I had the facilities to bring you to life. Couldn't let anyone know that you were really a clone."

"So, how am I getting home?" she asked.

"I brought the _Roddenberry_ out two days. You should be able to make it to Barnard's Star within half a dozen hours," he explained.

"I could have made it to Barnard's Star within a half dozen hours anyway, how should I explain the delay?" she asked.

"You were looking for the _Sparta_ of course, but it's got a full Erebus suite, and you couldn't find it after two days of looking, even knowing where it was supposed to be. Space is big, and the _Roddenberry_ just doesn't have the sensors needed to discover it," he offered.

Winona nodded, "Well, it seems you've got everything figured out. I mean, now that I think about it, and isn't that a true statement, but I remember that you even figured out how to explain my sudden youth."

"The explosion was nine months ago, the funeral seven, and two days ago, before heading out to find _Sparta_, you got out of the regen tank, a posthumous gift from your older brother for your seventy-fifth birthday, which is, of course, today," he explained.

"Thanks Jimmy," she said.

"You're welcome Winnie, and have a good life," he said, opening the hatch to the hangar, just under the exterior surface of the _Sparta_'s hull, revealing the _Roddenberry_, a small vessel based on the design of the Daube-class runabout from Star Trek. Twenty-three meters long, fourteen meters wide, and five and a half meters tall, with a grey, reinforced nickel-iron hull, accommodations for eight, and a built-in floo. Since it was customized, it was significantly faster than the standard scout vessels of the same design, able to maintain a safe velocity of five kilocees (five thousand times the speed of light, _c_) at FTL, twice standard, due to the more expensive rockets and more efficient mass effect field. While the inspiration's warp core was replaced by a fusion reactor, the warp nacells, not required for faster than light flight, were instead used for sensors and weapons, giving the _Roddenberry_ and her sister vessels quite the bite.

Winona stood at the _Roddenberry_'s airlock, and then looked back at her brother, still leaning against the frame of the hatch, "I'll see you in another life, brother."

**Updated** June 17, 2014


	10. Hannah III

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Note:** I suggest reading the latest entries in the WikiDex to get some background on some of the things mentioned in this and further chapters.

**Hannah III**

_June 19, 2033  
__HIMY Martialis, Toliman B - Terra Nova L1, Toliman System (Alpha Centauri)_

Her Imperial Majesty, Hannah of Mars, looked out of the sapphire glass observation window ahead of her. The _Martialis_, the Imperial yacht, had dropped out of FTL, and had been pointed in such a way that the view from her observation chamber would line up perfectly with Terra Nova. Even this far out, at the Toliman B - Terra Nova L1, between the star and the planet, it was still quite large. She compared it, mentally, to the view of the Moon from the surface of the Earth, or there Mothership from Mars.

"Beautiful, isn't it, Your Majesty?" asked her companion, Admiral Doomhammer.

"That it is, Admiral," confirmed Hannah. "From up here it's just green hills, blue sea, and fluffy white clouds." She sighed heavily, thinking of what she couldn't see, "No border friction, no rebels, and no international tension."

"The first chance for the Children of Sol to prove that they could move beyond their petty differences and settled a new world in peace and harmony," noted the Admiral sarcastically. "And then we have to throw it all away."

"Well, all is not lost yet, Admiral," noted Hannah.

"Of course not, Your Majesty," he noted, stroking his heavily braided beard. Between the dwarves and the kzin'shassa it had become impossible for the Martian military forces to encourage clean shaven faces, and so instead it just encouraged keeping the facial hair safe. "There's still a chance that Putin will allow Novaya Rodina to remain independent."

"He can't afford to let them leave the Commonwealth, it would weaken Russia's position relative to the other supra-nationals, as well as set a precedent," she noted. "Both within the Commonwealth and for the other supra-nationals."

"Hence your pageantry tomorrow?" offered the Admiral.

Hannah nodded, "Though it's not just pagentry. If we don't allow Martian Terra Nova to be self-governing then we're no better than our political opponents. Plus, unlike the Rodinans, they're to remain within the Empire. Even with ansibles and FTL it'll be easier to manage Terra Nova from here, rather than from Imperial Center."

"I still think it would have been safer to have a Viceroy do this, it's what they're for, after all," he opined.

"Yes, it would have been safer, would have been easier, but it wouldn't have been the right thing. Those people are Martians, just the same as you or I, and they deserve to have local representation," she countered. "Even if they were to desire to leave the Empire, I'd let them. I don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past."

"And if Nurkhazaddûm wished for independence? Perhaps to join the CIS?"

"Well, I'd have to check for mass mind control first, but then, if it truly was the will of the people, I'd let them go. It's about the consent of the governed, the will of the people. Just because my father declared himself an Emperor doesn't mean that he deserved it. Just because I inherited his throne doesn't mean I deserve it."

"It doesn't mean you don't, though," he noted. "And I doubt that Nurkhazaddûm would wish to leave the Empire, we'd lose too much to gain too little. The Empire is still the largest economy we know of, with the most powerful military, and the largest population. Right now it would hurt too much to leave."

Hannah chuckled.

"What's so funny, Your Majesty?"

"Just thinking about politics."

"Normally politics isn't funny, at least, not when the consequence is a matter of life and death."

"It's just, well… You're aware that the Rodinans have signed a defense agreement with the Empire. What you might not be aware of is that the Europeans, Anglo-Luse, and the Asians all offered it as well. I suspect the Chinese didn't want to get on Putin's bad side, else they'd have offered it as well."

"And why is that funny?"

"We didn't offer the defense agreement, they did. They came to us, asking our help in securing their independence. They rejected the other offers, some which were made before they came to us."

"As I said, we're the most powerful," he offered.

As they were speaking the view out the window had slowly changed, as the _Martialis_ came closer to it's destination. By now Terra Nova was no longer visible, and instead another object was visible. Even though it was only five kilometers in radius, smaller even then Deimos, Mars' smallest moon, it appeared larger because it was closer.

He gestured to the metal sphere the vessel approached, "And that right there is part of why. No other military force has that presence."

"Until the _Ticonderoga_ is commissioned next month on Independence Day," she countered. "The Asians are also in the process of having a battlestar constructed, and that's just what's been publicly constructed. Yes, we're the only ones with the City Destroyer energy weapons, but that's just because my father wanted a Death Star to go along with his Star Destroyers."

"They are militarily sound," the Admiral countered. "In war games against the Anglo-Luse and Asians they've shown their worth."

"I know, but just because they're useful pop culture references doesn't mean they're not still pop culture references," she sighed. "Even beyond the grave his sense of humor haunts me."

The two shared a chuckle.

"Your father was one of a kind, Your Majesty," the dwarf remarked.

The two shared the silence as the _Martialis_ approached the portkey limit, where a portkey pilot from the _Aglarond_ would arrive and, once the velocity vectors of the _Martialis_ matched that of the _Aglarond_, the yacht would be portkeyed into a docking bay. Since the _Martialis_ was a similar size and shape to the _Proverbs_-class corvettes the Imperial yacht would use one designed for them.

"What are the chances of war, Admiral?" asked Hannah, breaking the silence.

"It depends on the Rodinans, really. There are murmurs that, once Martian Terra Nova gains self-rule, they'll declare their independence. If that happens it's inevitable that the Commonwealth will declare them in insurrection. That triggers our defense treaty with the Rodinans, which in turn forces the Russians to declare against us, which triggers our own treaties with the Anglo-Luse and the Asians. If we're lucky, the fighting will stay here, in Toliman, rather than spreading to Sol, but if we're not lucky, we'll have a World War on our hands."

Hannah sighed, "If I thought he'd take it, I'd offer to purchase the colonial rights to Novaya Rodina from Putin. Heck, I should do so anyway, just to win the public relations battle. This shouldn't be about land, I mean, there are a dozen garden worlds already discovered, and that's just within forty-eight lightyears, a mere week of FTL travel, and there's an order of magnitude more planets that are only marginally habitable like Venus or Mars. Are the Russians that scared of the Commonwealth disintegrating that they'd risk another World War, or rather, a Worlds War?"

"Change makes some people afraid," the Admiral said. "And the regen tanks, they're not going to allow for the older generations to die off and let the younger folks take over. The new colonies, that's where the young people will go, where they don't have to be stifled by the conservatives on Earth… and on Mars."

"Conservative?" asked Hannah, shocked at the accusation.

"Now?" asked Doomhammer. He shook his head, "No, and definitely not compared to some on Earth, but in a generation or two? It's why the magical societies before the fall of the Statue were so antiquated compared to the mundane world, because the longer someone lives, the more conservative they'll get, and the more they'll resist change. Luckily the Empire is structured to adjust to that change, adapt to the needs of a rapidly growing populace, at least, that's the hope."

**Updated** June 19, 2014


	11. Alicia I

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Alicia I**

_June 21, 2033  
__Lazy Þurisaz Ranch, Newydd Cantre'r Gwaelod, Anglo-Luse Terra Nova_

It was the buzzing of her wrist-comp that woke Alicia. As she opened her eyes she realized that it was still the middle of night, and the only light in her bedroom was the glow of her wrist-comp's screen. She'd set it up so that only three people could wake her in the middle of the night.

The first was her mother, who still lived in Newport, back in Shropshire on Earth. Since her mother had disowned her when she'd joined the Royal Navy straight out of Hogwarts, Alicia highly doubted it was Clarissa Scants.

The second was Professor Babbling, the head of the Ancient Runes department at Hogwarts. Alicia had set the Professor as her emergency contact when she'd enlisted sixteen years ago, and had carried the entry through a half dozen new wrist-comps, including three during her decade with the Royal Navy. They'd gotten back in touch when Alicia was trying to figure out what to do with her life, and they'd had a short, but sweet, fling, before mutually deciding that they preferred to keep their relationship purely intellectual. It might be Bathsheda, but Alicia doubted it, if only because they kept their communications since their breakup purely to e-mail, and this was a call.

That left the final option, and the one that Alica most regretted.

When she'd moved out to Terra Nova two years ago, on the first colonization wave, to get away from the painful memories, she'd had to register with the Colonial Militia, an adaptation of the American National Guard and the British Territorial Army. She went into Newydd Caerdydd for two days a month and a fortnight every year to maintain her qualifications on _HMTNV Audacious_, which was home-ported at HMNB Cantre'r Gwaelod, which was amazingly enough only ten kilometers from the waters of Finnigan's Bay.

So it was that, when Alicia rolled over and grabbed her wrist-comp off her bedside table she answered the call, "Chief Petty Officer Scants?"

"Sorry to wake you, Chief Petty Officer, but you've been activated," came the voice over the line, which Alicia recognized as Able Spacer Cedric Bloggs, one of the third-generation AIs enlisted with the Colonial Naval Militia.

"Activated?" she asked with a yawn. "What, are we are war?"

"Funny you mention that," commented the AI.

Alicia blinked, and while holding the wrist-comp in one hand, fumbled with the drawer of the bedside table.

"As of… fourteen minutes ago there existed a state of war between the Anglo-Luse Alliance, and allies, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and allies," explained Able Spacer Bloggs.

"We're at war with the Russians?" asked Alicia as she continued to search. Finally her fingers touched the glass vial she kept for emergencies, and extracted it from the drawer as she turned, swung her legs out of bed, and sat up. She flicked off the plastic cap and downed the pepper-up potion with a single swig.

"Aye, and the _Audacious_ is going to launch in one hour," confirmed Bloggs.

As the steam shot from her ears Alicia dropped the vial, and using both hands, slipped her wrist-comp onto her left wrist, before tightening the straps. "How soon before I'm required to report in?"

"You've got… fourteen minutes, Chief," responded Bloggs.

"I'm on my way," she said, standing up from her bed. "Why are we at war?"

"The Commonwealth declared war on the Empire of Mars, activating the mutual defense agreement with the Alliance," explained Bloggs.

Alicia grabbed her dressing robe and flung it around her otherwise naked body, "Why did the Commonwealth declare war?" She disliked how clunky some of the third-generation AIs were. She'd talked with, and even met, a few second and forth generation AIs, both types were much more… human, than the third-gen AIs. It wasn't their fault, the rest of the worlds hadn't quite figured out how to replicate the generation process, and so they seemed a bit slow, hence why Bloggs was only an Able Spacer rather than a Leading Rate.

"The Commonwealth declared war because the Empire declared war," explained Bloggs.

Alicia sighed as she slipped her feet into her slippers and headed towards the water closet. She knew she had less than a dozen minutes, and hoped she'd have enough time to get a quick shower in before rushing through the floo to the naval base. "How about this, what was the instigating incident that started the chain of events?"

"Oh, Empress Hannah the first of Mars gave self-rule to Martian Terra Nova," explained Bloggs.

"And then?" she asked, stepping back out of her slippers and shucking her robe.

"Then Novaya Rodina declared independence from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Martian Terra Nova recognized them within thirty minutes, followed by the Empire of Mars proper, then Canada, Israel, and then the rest of the Anglo-Luso Alliance. The South and East Asians followed suit. That was by 1200 Zulu yesterday. At 1300 Zulu Czar Putin of Russia declared Novaya Rodina in rebellion against the Commonwealth of Independent States," explained Bloggs, helpfully fulling in some of the blanks while Alica stepped into the shower and quickly got clean. She'd personally applied the runes that had conjured the water and soap, rotated them in a vortex around her body and hair, then vanished the now dirty water, and then dried her in about thirty seconds.

"I assume the Martians then stood in solidarity with the Rodinans, triggered the Declaration by the Commonwealth, which in turned triggered the mutual defense agreements?" asked Alicia as she stepped out of the shower and picked back up her robe. Luckily she lived alone and the wrist-comp was set to audio-only.

"Correct Chief," replied the AI.

"Time remaining?" asked Alicia.

"Nine minutes," he replied.

Alicia grabbed her wand from her bedside table, strapping the holster to the inside of her right arm. Some days she wished she'd been born a psion, others she was glad she didn't have the extra pressure. A few steps over to her wardrobe as she was stepping into her panties and then pulling on her bra.

"Inform Lieutenant Commander Smith that I'll be there in seven minutes," said Alicia, as she stepped into her slacks. Undershirt and then blouse followed. She grabbed a fresh pair of socks as she turned from the wardrobe and headed for the front room.

Her ranch house was much larger than she needed, at least now, but it was only marginally more expensive to get the five bedroom two story model than the two bedroom one she had initially thought about. Hopefully she'd find someone special, or at least a willing sperm donor, before she got too old. She was already in her mid thirties, and although mages aged slower than mundanes, she didn't want to have to purchase a trip through the regen tank to have a kid either.

The Lazy Þurisaz Ranch was named because during the allotment process Alicia had only received this particular hundred hectares because the giant who had initially been granted it had failed to return his paperwork on time, and the þurisaz rune was named after the proto-germanic word for 'giant'. It was also her home, and where she was raising a herd of aurochs, which unlike the non-magical cattle, were able to adapt to the slightly different ecology of Terra Nova, much like how magical species, such as non-baseline humans, fae, and kzin'shassa, could eat the native flora and fauna, but baseline humans couldn't, at least not without evacuating it from both ends. It was located about two hundred ten kilometers from Newyyd Caerdydd, or New Cardiff, the capital of Newydd Cantre'r Gwaelod, or the New Lowland Hundred, one of the dozen colonial state of Anglo-Luse Terra Nova (the Americans had insisted their be thirteen colonial states, but the rest of the Anglo-Luse Parliament overruled them), but only about ten kilometers from the nearest town, Hollyhead. Of course, for Alicia, who grew up twenty kilometers from the edge of the Birmingham destruction zone, and two hundred ten kilometers from Diagon Alley, the distances were massive and the countryside practically empty.

Alicia continued to talk with Able Spacer Bloggs as she slipped on her socks and then laced up her boots. She still had five minutes lefts when she deemed herself ready, and walked over to the fireplace.

With a flick of her wand the fire was lit, then a dash of floo powder and a shouted "HMNB Cantre'r Gwaelod", she was on her way.

At least, that was the plan before she bounced off the back of her fireplace.

"Bloggs, what's the status of the floo network?" Alicia asked from the floor of her living room.

"Oh, sorry, the floo network went down about forty-five minutes ago. Suspicions are that it was due to enemy action, since the floo network in both Anglo-Luse Terra Nova and Martian Terra Nova went down at the same time," explained Bloggs.

"You didn't think to tell me that earlier?" she asked as she picked herself up off her floor.

"You're not the only Militia member I'm talking with. I'm calling in everyone in the state," he replied. "I'd like to see you multitask like that and not forget to mention little things like that."

"Well, then inform Lieutenant Commander Smith that I will not be arriving soon. I've got to apparate to Holyhead, and then from there I'll catch a portkey to Newydd Caerdydd," Alicia said. She then paused, "Before I do that though, is there any other travel difficulties?"

"Now that you ask, yes, there are reports of an anti-portkey ward set up at New Cardiff Central station," reported Bloggs.

Alicia sighed, "Okay… Well, unfortunately I'll likely not be able to make the launching of the _Audacious_ after all. Twenty klicks is about the extent of my apparition range if I don't want to risk splinching myself. I can do about two of those back to back, but after that… no way can I make six of those in half an hour."

"Chief Scants, Lieutenant Commander Smith wishes to talk with you," interrupted Bloggs.

"Put him through," she said, as she brought her wrist-comp up to face level. While the AI preferred audio calls because of his ability to multi-task, her CO preferred video calls.

Surprisingly the video was from the inside of the _Audacious_, Alicia could see the CIC behind him. "Able Spacer Bloggs informs me that I won't have my best thaumaturgist when we launch in forty minutes to face the Russians."

"Sorry Sir," Alicia said, while snapping a salute. "With the floo network down and the anti-portkey ward in the capital, I can't get there in time. I already had a face to face meeting with the back of my hearth."

"Sorry to hear that Chief, Petty Officer Barnes just isn't half as good as you are," said Smith. He looked down, likely at a data slate or computer, "Okay, well, you're not getting out of duty, we're not just fighting the Russians and the Arabs either. The Chinese and the Africans have decided to get in on the fun too. While it's unlikely that the Europeans will join in, and thus the Latinos, we don't have the Asians either."

"They didn't honor the call?" asked Alicia, surprised.

"They couldn't get the votes in parliament from what I hear from the Beeb and CNN," her commanding officer explained. "Their obviously not supporting the Russians or Chinese, but with such a long border with the Commonwealth and People's Republic, it's not surprising. Europe's a bit of a surprise, but I guess France didn't want to push the clone issue just yet."

"You think it's a proxy war?" she asked.

"Russia practically sent all of their fae and magical humans to Novaya Rodina, keeping only the mages and other magicals who could pass for baseline. What do you bet they did it to provoke a war with Mars?" he asked in response.

"I'm just a rancher, sir. I couldn't possibly comment on that sort of high-level politics."

"Exactly, Chief," he said. "But back to business. Since I can't have you, I'll have to temporarily transfer you to another unit. You think you can get to Wyddno Barracks?"

Alicia thought for a moment, "Yeah, it's only about fifty klicks away, I can make it there in fifteen minutes, less if I take my broom."

"Okay, I'm transferring you, temporarily, to the Colonial Army Militia, at least until I can pick you back up once the floo is operational or I can get clearance to do an overflight," Lieutenant Commander Smith explained. "I've informed Colonel Snapspear that you're on your way."

"Aye, sir," acknowledged Alicia with another salute.

He ended the call, leaving Alicia in relative silence, only the crackling of the fire behind her making a sound.

"Well, that's bloody bollocks," she cursed. She then jogged to her coat closet, where she removed her flying robes and her broom, a Comet that had been a thirtieth birthday gift from Bathsheda. She nearly closed the door again before she knelt down and cleared away the boots and shoes from the floor of the closet.

She placed her palm against the floor, activating the runes she'd carved on the underside of the boards. She then drew the unlocking runes with her wand, and watched as a hidden compartment revealed itself.

She extracted a pistol, a belt with holster, and a magazine. The pistol, holster, and magazine had been an experiment she'd done during her last year in the Royal Navy. Unlike all civilian pistols, and even most officers' sidearms, her pistol had more than just 'Safe' and 'Stun'. She'd added two more modes, 'Kill' and 'Kinetic'. The first was fairly obvious, being based on the runic formulation of the killing curse. She'd tested it a few times while hunting, and she'd guess that it'd drop anything short of a giant, troll, or other large magically resistant being or beast. Plus, being based on the killing curse, it would go right through any personal shields. The later mode fired a three-round burst of un-augmented bullets, which would bypass most magical shields, though not any arty-grav based ones. The holster was inscribed with runes of cleaning and repair, as well as a notice-me-not that only she was keyed into. As long as she wasn't too obvious nobody would bother her about the pistol. The magazine was something she'd really been proud of. She'd tweaked the conjuration charm such that certain parts of the cartridge vanished at different rates. The brass, which was extra strong and withstood twice the pressure, vanished based on its distance from the magazine, rather than a set amount of time after firing as normal; the powder was more powerful, imparting extra force on the bullet; the bullet itself was conjured osmium, again increasing the power of the bullet, since osmium was denser than the traditional lead. Taken together the bullets fired from her pistol had nearly the stopping power of a rifle round, and vanished shortly after impact, lessening the danger of over-penetration.

She strapped the belt around her waist, inserted the magazine, and then holster the pistol, letting her flying robes cover it, hiding it even more from sight. She then extinguished her fire, and wished that she'd have enough time for breakfast. Hopefully once she arrived at the Barracks.

**Updated** July 9, 2014


	12. Winona II

Harry Potter and related properties belong to JK Rowling et. al. Independence Day and related properties belong to Roland Emmerich, Centropolis Entertianment, 20th Century Fox, et. al. Mass Effect and related properties belong to Bioware, Electronic Arts, et. al. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus all that belongs to me are the words, not the world.

**Winona II**

_July 4, 2034  
__New Denver Station, EML1, Cislunar Space_

"So much for Independence Day," remarked Winona as she flicked a holographic button on her wrist-comp, turning off the wall of video screens.

"It's not that bad, mum," said Jamie, though Winona could see the discomfort on her son's face.

Not that he was truly her son, her current body being about four years old, not counting the time in the clone tank, and thus much too young to have carried the thirty-four year old MAP (Member of the Alliance Parliament) to term. She did, though, remember carrying him, much as she remembered the pregnancy of his older twin siblings, Artemis, the Queen Consort of Great Britain, and Apollo, First Gentleman of the United State of America. She wasn't truly their mother either, but since she had the genes of their mother, and the memories of their mother, if not the soul of their mother, she generally regarded herself as their mother.

"Can you believe that they're still trying to figure out what to call this war?" she asked, making sure the subject didn't inevitably drift into something she didn't want to talk about. "It's been over a year and they still haven't decided what to call it. Each network, each newspaper, is calling it something different."

"It's not very easy, you've got to admit. It's the first war since the Independence War that wasn't some supra-national forcing a neighboring country to join," he reminded her. "Plus, it's a complicated war."

"But isn't that what it is? Yeah, Novaya Rodina doesn't technically neighbor any members of the Commonwealth, but it's still Putin attempting to force them to join, or rather re-join," she countered.

"Well, from a certain point of view…"

"Jamie, I thought I taught you better," scolded Winona. "Politics is always about perspective, especially forcing your perspective on your opponents such that your desire seems the only inevitable outcome, from their new perspective."

"Well, okay, what would you call it?" he asked. "You're nice and old, either a Boomer or an Gen X-er. I bet you're just itching to call it 'World War III', aren't you?"

"You're lucky I love you fro that old comment," she hoked. "Well, the thought had crossed my mind, but no, this isn't a world war, those were a consequence of the politics of the first half of the twentieth century." She paused, "Though this little cascade of alliances sure seems analogous to the First World War."

"I'll admit, I voted against the Declaration of War," he admitted.

"You'd leave your cousin out to dry like that?" she asked, referring to Empress Hannah of Mars.

"It was not the right thing for the Alliance, and my constituents agreed with me," he countered. "And I've so far been vindicated."

"But it's the right thing to do, yes?" she asked.

Jamie hesitated, then slowly nodded, "Yeah, it's the right thing to do, and yes, this is a perfect opportunity to lecture me on the importance of doing what is right over doing what is easy. I don't need lectures on morals from my mother, I'm a grown man."

"Speaking of which, when are you and Cassie going to add to my growing stable of grandchildren? I find that in my old age I feel the need to spoil them," she joked.

"Mum, you may be seventy-eight years old, but you look nearly a decade younger than me and Cassie," he remarked.

"You're just as bad as your father," she sighed.

"What's he done now?" Jamie asked with a sigh of his own.

"He's touting me as his 'other woman', the younger model he got to replace his wife," she said. "I'd be flattered, but, well, he may be in his seventies now, but he still acts like the twenty-something I fell it love with."

"Having regrets?" he asked.

"No, but I'm thinking of giving him a regen tank session for his seventy-fifth as well, that way we'll be back to our old dichotomy. I'll be the hot older woman trying to force the rebellious young man into a domestic life."

"You know, I really didn't need to hear about my parents' love life," Jamie said, mockingly covering his ears. "You're already young enough to be your own granddaughter, no matter how long it took Arty and Appy to have their own kids. I don't want to have brothers and sisters who are the same age as my children."

"Eh, it's not that bad, Jimmy and I had an uncle that was younger than we were, born ten months after I was, nearly enough to think that grandma and grandpa had gotten inspired," she joked.

"Again, I really don't need to know about the love life, and now it's about my grandparents. I mean, I thought that since they were in a different dimension that couldn't affect me, but no, here I am, hearing about them doing it in their fifties," Jamie mockingly complained.

"They were good people, your grandparents," Winona said with a sigh, once again missing her, or rather his at the time, former life. Oh, the benefits of this life was much batter, item one being her current body, and her current pronoun. Sure, she had enjoyed life as Jimmy, who wouldn't after having sex as much as he did, but she always felt more comfortable as Winona. Though, on second thought, perhaps that's just because of that memories she was given. How much of her acceptance of being left behind because of the destruction of the time turners was because she had actually accepted it, and how much was because she'd been effectively born to accept it?

"Perhaps another time," said Jaime. "I did come here for a reason, you know."

"Oh, I know. Your people called my people, they agreed on a time for us to meet, and lo and behold, here we are. Who'd have thought that one day I'd need a secretary to have a sit down talk with my son?"

"Mum! This is serious."

"What's your father got to do with this?" Winona japed.

Jamie sighed, and Winona had thought her children would have learned already which words not to use.

"I know, I know, this is important," she said. "I'm thinking I'll go with 'The First Worlds War'. both as a call-back and as an honest description."

"First?" he asked. "And no, this isn't what we needed to talk about."

"You brought up the subject, not me," she countered. "And yes, I meant 'First'. It's a great big galaxy, and we've barely even explored the neighborhood. Garden worlds, and near garden worlds that don't quite have the same ecological problems as trying to impose, even partially, an alien ecosystem on a planet, aren't exactly rare, as long as you're willing to look for them. It's not pessimistic to realize that this war, however it ends, is going to solve the political problems that caused it. Wars don't solve problems, they only create them."

"And that's why I've come, because Parliament is considering creating another problem, and as the closest MAP," he said, pronouncing each letter, rather than forming a word, "to you and Cerberus, it's fallen on me to figure out a solution."

"What's the problem?" she asked, though she suspected. She'd long since gotten over the profound loss of her minor precognition that her time turner access had given her (or rather the lich that had been the source of her memories). She still cheated, just not nearly as much as she once did, and with a lot more work involved to make it appear effortless.

"It's the enlistment contract," he explained.

"That's the problem?"

"You of all people I would think would have a problem with slavery," Jamies practically shouted.

"Slavery? I wasn't aware that the Anglo-Luso Alliance was in the practice of enlisting slaves. I'll remind you that slavery has been outlawed across the worlds by treaty for nearly thirty years, and by the United Kingdom for two hundred last August," Winona countered, using her well practiced talents for misdirection and obfuscation.

"I'm specifically referring to the practice of breeding and forcibly enlisting clone soldiers."

"I'll remind you, that cloning has been outlawed in the Anglo-Luso Alliance for over a decade, and while Cerberus isn't a party to the treaty, we recognize that cloning is regarded in nearly the same light as slavery," she countered. "You're treading dangerous ground her, Jamie."

"I'm treading dangerous ground? I'm pretty sure it's Cerberus who's doing the illegal acts, and I don't want the Alliance to go down the same route," Jamie shouted.

"Calm down, you do realize I'm just being contrary, right? I'm well aware of the appearances, but the reality of the enlistment contract is quite to the contrary," Winona said. She looked down, and with a few swipes, pokes, and flicks, and a final tap, the video wall that had been blank, reflecting only the interior of her office, now showed an obviously well produced video.

Rows upon rows of softly focused clone tanks passed beneath the camera, the gauge shapes of the people growing inside visible. Then the scene blurred, and then focused again, this time showing a group of men and women of various species in pseudo-military outfits sparing on a mat. Another blur and focus, and a similar group, all in the prime of their life, practiced with rifles on a shooting range. Blur and refocus, and now they were training their psionics, the blue glow something that Winona was sure Jamie was familiar with. Another blur and refocus, and they were training at magic, practicing with stunners and shields. Another blur and refocus, and a group of soldiers, mercenaries by their lack of patches denoting allegiance, hiked through a vaguely alien forest, their armor covered in the hexagonal digital camouflage pattern trademarked by Cerberus and armed with state of the art weapons. Another blur and refocus, and a large group of soldiers, the mercenaries, were saluting an ambiguously red flag, just a bit out of focus, but similar to the flag of either the PRC or the ALA, and were seemingly reciting some pledge or oath while doing so. Then the video faded to black, replaced by the copper and silver Cerberus logo on a hexagonally titled background before ending.

"Yeah, it's nice propaganda, but it's still slavery and cloning," Jamie countered.

"It's not slavery, we've roughly a thirty percent drop-out rate," Winona explained. "And each of them sign a contract with us for a set enlistment period."

"You've only got a rate that high because of brain washing," he countered.

"Brain washing?" she asked, indignant, and flashes of her own implanted memories came to mind. "No more so than graduates of military school and service academies. While our current batches aren't running any memories of allegiance, for obvious reasons, test runs we've done have shown only marginal increases in enlistment percentages, and patriotism on par with natural born students of military schools and service academies."

"So, it's not slavery, but I'm pretty sure those are clones," Jamie admitted.

"They're not clones, each and every one is the result of a sperm fertilizing an egg and then growing to term, or the equivalent non-terrestrial process, no different from the same process that has been used by fertility experts for decades. Might I remind you that you have not a few cousins that were conceived _in vitro_ and brought to term in a fetal tank." Winona explained. "Would you like to see the video about the fertilization process too? I find the adaptation we've made of murgar reproduction quite amazing."

Jamie waved his mother off, "No, I don't need to see another video. So, they may not be true clones, but you can't deny they've been especially bred."

"No more so than the protheans did with prehistoric humans and fae, or did you forgot that little revelation? They didn't just observe, they meddled. We're just doing a bit to reverse that meddling," she countered.

"And what about the magical acrids, murgars, and kzin'shassas?"

"Okay, but the kzin'shassas have been magical since before we started Kamino. We just leveled the playing field. Plus, without the murgar fetal tanks they'd be left out of the possibility for psionics, since their natural reproductive cycle precludes the introduction of phlebotinum into the young."

"I assume this was at the suggestion of Uncle Jimmy?"

Winona shook her head, "No, though he did consider using the process to integrate a few non-humans into the House of Shepard, but realized that due to the requirement of using polyjuice that they'd not actually be related to him. The process was integrated into Kamino within the fifth generation, though obviously we hadn't perfected the murgar adaptation to the fetal tanks until two years ago. We're currently in the process of integrating both fae teleportation and metamorph abilities into our future full-scale production batches."

"That's another matter that's difficult to stomach, the integration clause of the contract," Jamie brought up, changing the subject. Winona has known that by doing so it was tantamount to him admitting defeat.

"I don't see what the problem is," she lied.

"There are less than a thousand acrids within the Alliance," he explained. "Ten times that for the number of murgars, and another order of magnitude for kzin'shassas. There are less than a million fae of all sub-species as well."

"Within the Sol system, prior to the colonization of Terra Nova, there were about ten billion sapient living beings, add in another billion for the non-sapient beings with souls, such as apes, dolphins, and the various 'intelligent' magical beasts such as dragons, manticores, and hippogriffs as well as a few million, mostly fourth-gen, AIs," she explained. "Of that, humans made up a majority, with seven billion, an increase of nearly double in the twenty-six years since the Independence War knocked that number back below four billion. Of the three billion non-humans; a sixth were fae of various sorts, mainly in Africa, South America, and Southern Asia; another half billion were murgars; and the final two billion was split roughly equally between acrids and kzin'shassas. So, it only seemed right that our production batches reflected that ratio, seventy percent humans, ten percent each of acrids and kzin'shassas, and five percent fae and murgars."

"If we accept the contract at those numbers we'll vastly increase the proportion of non-terrestrial citizens of the Alliance," summarized Jamie.

Winona paused, then scoffed, realizing the true reason for the question, "By God and Merlin, what did that girl do to you?"

"What?" asked Jamie.

"Your wife, Cassie, what did she do to you? I know your father and I didn't raise you to be a xenophobe," she explained.

"I'm not a xenophobe," he yelled defensively. "I grew up with Martian bodyguards."

Winona was flabbergasted. "Is it because we weren't around? No, your father and I always tried to be there for you. I mean, your brother and sister aren't xenophobes, at least, not that I can tell."

"Oh, so now it's about Arty and Appa now?" Jamie growled. "You going to compare me to the Queen of England, or the First Gentleman of the United States?"

"I mean, your uncle practically…" said Winona, ignoring for a moment her son's outburst, then stopped. "Jimmy practically raised your brother and sister, but not you. He was too busy running the Empire to help us. That's it, isn't it?"

"I'm not a xenophobe. I just want to maintain the heritage of the nations of the Alliance," countered Jamie.

"Well, at least you're not racist," quipped Winona softly. She then continued before her son could rant again. "The proportions are final. We're not going to change our morals to suit yours. You came to us looking for 'expendable' troops to fight this war because you didn't want to start conscriptions after the losses you've suffered. We're offering you an option. Fully trained units, capable of both magic and psionics, armed and unarmed, melee and ranged. I've explained that it's not illegal. If you don't want it, then you'll have to pay the termination fee."

Jamie glared at his mother, then glanced down at his wrist-comp, flicking through the text of the contract, then paled as he read the relevant clause. "Two divisions?"

"They're already in production, the batches will be finished by the end of the year, and training complete by February. We've committed resources to this contract, we expect renumeration for those resources, regardless of whether or not your choose to accept the results. The contract was negotiated in good faith, and approved by both the Parliament and the Executive Council"

"Are you charging the Empire this?" Jamie asked.

"Our deal with the Empire was slightly different. We sold them the tanks and the equipment required for utilizing them. As I understand it they have a brigade's worth of tanks on each of their battlestars, as well a division's worth at both Terra Nova and Athena. Once both colonies are up and running we're set to deliver five million more tanks, a million for each species. And that's just because that's the most we could deliver within the timeframe your cousin asked for. This is the future of our society, our civilization, how we'll survive, as Hermione likes to call it, the Great Filter."

"You honestly expect me to believe Hannah is deploying clones? I thought she was all about establishing a unified heritage for the Empire."

"What better way than ten million new citizens a year who already know all four Imperial languages, know the history of all five species, and have no prejudice against the other species? I mean, it works for the AIs, why not the rest of us?" asked Winona.

"You think it'll work?" asked Jamie, no longer quite as enraged. "You really think that they'll not have problems?"

"Well, they'll still have problems dealing with us natural born folks, but already most Martian Terra Novans are tank born, and Athena is almost entirely so, though they've already increased the numbers of natural born Athenans within the last year naturally."

Winona stood, and began to walk around her office as she spoke, "Already we have highly efficient pre-fabs for the colonies. New Manhattan is just a year old and already supports a population of thirty thousand, and can support a hundred times that with ease. I've seen estimates that, within fifty years we'll be able to fully grow a colony from discovery to a billion within a decade. By the end of the century the Children of Sol will number over a trillion. Now, if you reject this contract, if you reject this opportunity, if you let your fear of the unknown constrict you, ninety-seven percent of those will be Martians, and you and your children will be just minority, those that stuck to Earth and didn't take the opportunity presented."

"Or, you can ensure that Britain and the Anglo-Luso Alliance maintains its position within the grand scheme of things," countered Winona. "This war isn't going to change things, but how we fight the war, the methods we use, those will."

Jamie thought for a moment, and Winona could see the thoughts of her son upon his face. They sat in silence for a fem minutes, before he looked up and nodded, "You're right. I'll give my recommendation to Parliament to approve the contract."

Winona stood, and ehr son followed a second later. "Thank you for seeing things from my perspective Jamie. I know it's difficult, but things are changing, I just hope that politics won't hurt our family."

Jamie reached out and embraced her, "Mum, I'll always love you, and that will never change." He then released her and took a step back, "As for Cassie, we were thinking of doing it after the War finished, but every day it looks like this will be a much longer and much bloodier war than we'd initially thought."

"It began as a war of independence, now it's become a war of ideology," she declared.

"Well, it's about the become a clone war," he chuckled.

She joined the laughter, "You know, if your uncle were still here he'd make a quip about how 'Begun this clone war has'."

**Updated** July 9, 2014**  
Author's Note** Please review, but realize that I delete all guest/unsigned/anonymous reviews. If you can't be bothered to log in, I can't be bothered to care.


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